Dead Reckoning
by SirenoftheStorm
Summary: What if someone else found James Norrington in Tortuga before Elizabeth did? AU after the beginning of DMC. Beckett gets the compass, Jack stabs the heart, someone unexpected becomes Pirate King, and James gets a second chance. W/E N/OC
1. Prologue: The Gravity of Duty

DISCLAIMER: POTC and all canon characters are owned by the Walt Disney Corporation, which is much like the East India Trading Company only without the opium. Luckily, hanging is no longer a socially acceptable means of conflict resolution and I do not have enough money to be worth suing, so I can get away with abducting their characters and doing strange, wonderful, and occasionally obscene things with them for my own personal amusement.

This story would not exist if not for the help and encouragement of fellow Norrington fangirl MorganBonny, who over the course of many conversations and emails helped me turn this plot bunny from a hideous little mutant abomination of a creature to something actually worth posting. Thanks also to Nytd for doing a marvelous job beta-ing.

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"But then what kind of scale

Compares the weight of two beauties

The gravity of duty

Or the ground speed of joy?" –Ani DiFranco, _School Night_

_

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_

Lieutenant James Norrington sat behind his desk and looked thoughtfully at the young cabin boy standing before him, a skinny little thing with bright orangey-gold hair and freckles. The child had joined them two ports back and fallen into the routine on the ship without too much trouble. He was no sailor yet, but a hard worker who'd accepted the tedious, dirty tasks assigned to him with a practical resignation, and with some seasoning, he'd make a decent seaman.

The only problem with all of this was that "he" was a girl. It had taken James a while to realize it, for, being about ten years old, "Jack" Marble had not yet developed the more obvious physical clues that would have given her away had she been older. It had been scarcely a suspicion at first, but the more he'd watched her, the more certain he'd become. He took a deep breath, then let it out, then made himself start talking as he could see her getting nervous on account of the long silence. He really hated having to do this, but he knew things would go smoother if he addressed this privately; the captain shared the superstition with the crew that females brought bad luck to ships, and there was no need to subject the girl to the angry tirades and nastiness that would follow when they found out.

"I need to talk to you about something," he said awkwardly. "You're a good worker and you've been nothing but a help for the time you've been on board with us, but sooner or later someone other than me is going to figure out that you're not really a boy. You've been clever about hiding it, mind you," he added when "Jack's face filled with a mixture of horror and despair, "and no worse a shipmate for it, but we simply can't be having a little girl on board."

"How did you know?" she whispered, eyes downcast.

"A lot of little things - the slight distance you keep from the other lads, the way you already knew how to sew and take care of your uniform despite not having any experience on board ships before, the way you're so careful never to attract any attention, a few tiny little mannerisms like the way you smooth your hair back... Look, Jack… what's your real name?"

"Susanna," the girl said softly.

"Susanna," James said, keeping his voice soft and reassuring. "Your parents must be worried sick about you. Tell me who they are. I'll arrange passage back home for you. Where are they?" Susanna looked up at him defiantly.

"Their current address is at St. Paul's cemetery, third row from the gate, fourth and fifth graves on the left. Patrick and Cecelia Marble. Would you like to send them a message to let them know I'm all right?"

_Damn_, James thought, feeling a pang of sympathy for her.

"You must have family somewhere, if not in the colonies, in England, Ireland, Wales…?" The girl's jaw set stubbornly.

"None that I'd care to live with," she said.

"You say that as if you have an alternative. You don't," James told her, more firmly this time. "It will no doubt be difficult, living with more distant relatives, maybe ones you're not fond of, instead of your parents, but it's simply not safe for a little girl your age to be alone in the world. I am not leaving you on the streets, and I'm not sending you to a workhouse."

"I'd rather you did," Susanna said, lip trembling. James shook his head resolutely.

"You don't know the kinds of things that can happen to children in those places. You belong with your family. Tell me who you were supposed to go to when your parents died."

"Uncle Jim and Aunt Frances," she said, the words pronounced with a mixture of loathing and nervousness.

"Do you have anyone else who might take you in besides your aunt and uncle?" James asked sensibly.

"If I did, I wouldn't have jumped on a ship," Susanna snapped, her head coming up and her blue eyes sparking hostility at him. "I'm not stupid."

"As long as you are on this ship, miss, you will not speak to a superior officer in that tone," he told her, letting the steel of authority come back into his voice. "You'd never have dared give me that kind of cheek five minutes ago, and boy or girl, I will not tolerate it. Now, we can do this the hard way or the easy way. If you cooperate, I'll find you passage back to your aunt and uncle and no one on the ship will have to know anything more than that you were called back home. There will be no trouble. But if you won't tell me who they are, then I'll have to make inquiries. The captain will need to be told, and your uncle will no doubt be annoyed at being summoned to come and pick you up."

Susanna nodded, then suddenly spun around. He heard her taking several deep breaths, shoulders trembling, and he realized that she was trying not to cry. What the devil was one supposed to do with a crying ten-year-old orphan girl? He was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy. This was not what he was trained for. But she did manage to control her emotions, to his great relief, and when she turned back to him, her eyes were red and swollen, but her face was tearless.

"Do we have to go right now, Lieutenant?" she asked in a miserable voice.

"You mean they're here, in Kingston?" She nodded and James felt a surge of relief. Thank God, this would be out of his hands.

"I think that would be best, to get you back there and… and settled in and such. I'll accompany you there and make sure your uncle knows that you behaved entirely appropriately during your time as part of the crew." He knew he sounded stiff, formal, and slightly ridiculous, but he really wasn't sure what else he could say to comfort the girl.

"I'll get my things, sir," Susanna said and left. James stared at the wall of his cabin for a while, feeling alternately frustrated and guilty.

Children were not always well-treated. It was a plain fact of life. But surely Susanna would be better off among her own relations than she would be anywhere else he might leave her. With the exception of her outburst a few minutes before, she seemed a soft-spoken, obedient child, and he imagined she should fit into a strange household without much trouble to her guardians. What good would it do him to know precisely what she had run away from? It would only be one more thing for him to feel guilty about. He couldn't help wondering, all the same.

Her uncle's house was in the rundown tenement district in the south end of the city, and the closer they got to it, the tighter Susanna's hand gripped his. Two of his fingers were starting to go numb by the time they reached the address she'd given him. His knock on the door was answered by a shout.

"What're you knockin' for, you stupid bastard! Just come in!"

James blinked in surprise and with an uncertain glance at Susanna, he entered the house. It was likely no worse than many in this part of town, he told himself firmly as he stepped over the amber-tinted shards of a bottle. The smell of sweat, ale, and stale food permeated the air, and the distant sound of laughter and conversation was coming from the main room, and as James stepped into the doorway he saw a group of men sitting around a table, playing dice.

"Hey, George, what took you so—" the man at the far end of the room began, andthen stopped. "Huh. Thought you was someone else."

"So I gathered," James said with a polite smile. "Lieutenant James Norrington. Are you Susanna's uncle?" The man's eyes fell to the child at his side.

"Yeah, that's my sister's brat you got there. I'm Jim Barker. What did she do?"

"She was employed as a cabin boy on the HMS Dauntless until I figured out that she wasn't a boy. When I questioned her about who I should return her to, she said that you had become her guardian since her parents' death. I apologize for not realizing and getting her back to you sooner." James realized that he was doing as he usually did when he was uncomfortable—resorting to extreme formality—and that it was not the best course to be taking in this situation, with these people.

"'S fine," Susanna's uncle said, taking a swig from a bottle that sat beside him on the table. "'Long as she wasn't any trouble." James was suddenly pushed aside by several figures running into the room at the same time.

"Dad, he stole sixpence off me! Make him give it back!"

"I didn't take nothing, that's a lie!"

The first speaker was a girl who couldn't be much older than fourteen or so, though her low-cut bodice tastelessly showed off her ample womanly attributes, closely followed by a boy who looked to be a year or two younger than Susanna and desperately overdue for a wash. Jim Barker scowled at the two of them.

"What're you botherin'_ me_ for? Bugger off, I got company. Where's yer ma? Find her."

"Asleep," the girl said, squeezing between the chairs and the wall to get over to her father's end of the table. James cringed in disgust as one of the men made a grab at her bottom as she tried to get past his chair, and she responded with an explicitly obscene curse that no girl her age should know.

"Watch yer mouth, you little hussy," her father said, apparently unconcerned by the entire affair.

"Fucker grabbed me!" the girl retorted, and the man who had done so grinned at her.

"Yeah, like that's somethin' new," Jim told her unsympathetically. "You twitchin' it around up and down the streets an' then whining someone's grabbed it. Get outta here, this is men's business." He gestured to the dice and alcohol, and the girl rolled her eyes.

"But Andrew took my sixpence!"

"She never had no sixpence, it was mine," the grimy boy argued.

James had had enough**.**

"Susanna's left something on the ship; we're going back to get it. Good afternoon," he said, and pulled the girl out of the room with him. They left the house in silence, and James waited until they were several houses away before speaking.

"Is it like that often there?"

"Yes," Susanna said, looking uncertain. "I didn't leave anything on the ship, sir."

"Yes, I know, but we're going back to the docks. I need to think." He had no idea what he was doing, but he couldn't shake the certainty that there had to be a better choice for the kid than living in that hellhole. _She'd be a goldfish among sharks_, he thought with a glance at her bright yellow-orange hair. _And I don't want to think about what some of those men might try in a few years if they get her alone._

"I could stay on the ship," Susanna suggested hesitantly, with hope rising in her eyes. "I promise I'd be careful not to let anyone find out."

"I still can't allow that. Let me think for a moment, all right?" he said shortly. He paced up and down the pier when they reached it, staring at the ocean, trying to come up with some sort of solution, racking his brain for any families he knew that might be able to take her in and coming up empty. Susanna, growing tired of keeping up with his long strides, sat on one of the piles and waited.

"James, is that you?" James snapped out of his reverie to see a familiar face approaching him.

"Stephen? Good God, what are you doing in the West Indies?" he asked his cousin, allowing himself to be hugged and responding with a more restrained clap on the man's shoulder.

"Keeping a trade agreement made by the previous owner of my ship," Stephen said, unable to suppress the pride in those last two words.

James's eyes widened. _"Your_ ship?"

Stephen grinned with infectious excitement. "You can come look if you'd like," he said, trying to sound casual about it and failing.

"If I like? I demand that you show me," James retorted, smiling back, then paused. "Damn. Do you mind if a child comes along? She'll behave herself; I seem to be in charge of her until I find somewhere that will take her."

"Not yours, I assume," Stephen teased.

"Most certainly not mine," he replied, refusing to rise to the bait. "It's a bit of a long story."

Stephen shrugged. "Want something to eat while you tell it?"

An hour and a half later, James was aboard his cousin's schooner, _The Impertinent Porpoise_, explaining the whole situation to Stephen while his orphaned goldfish happily explored the rigging**. **

"Bloody right you couldn't leave her there!" was his cousin's response when he finished. James sighed.

"But I can't bring her back onto the Dauntless and I don't exactly know any families here who might take her in."

"Oh, that's easy," Stephen said. "I'm short on crew; a cabin boy wouldn't be an entirely unwelcome addition." James blinked in surprise.

"But… she's a girl, and your crew… they wouldn't object?" Stephen snorted.

""Trying to run this ship with a skeleton crew of six men is exhausting enough that they'll be glad for any help they can get." He ran a hand through his hair, the other hand fondly patting the ship. "I spent every last penny I owned on this girl and ran up a debt besides. She's worth it, sure enough, but it's been hard going these last few months."

"I can lend you—" James began, but his cousin shook his head quickly.

"I know you can, and thank you, but I'd rather do this myself. I've been looking at some promising trade possibilities in the Orient." James nodded, then paused and glanced up at the sky.

"I should be getting back to the ship soon," he said regretfully. "I'll go talk to her and tell her she has the choice to stay with you. Thank you again, Stephen."

"Relax, would you?" Stephen told his younger cousin, shaking his head. "It's no trouble. The Navy's made you obsessive, you know. It's not good for you."

"The Navy is everything for me," James replied simply. "I'm doing work that's important to me, and I'm doing it well. Just standing around and watching the world spiraling into chaos would drive me mad." Stephen rolled his eyes.

"And running around, watching the world spiral into chaos, suits you better?"

"Well, if you put it that way…" James had to smile at that. "Yes, I suppose it does."


	2. Chapter 1: Drown The Words

DISCLAIMER: Now as long as you're just sitting there, pay attention. The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance, you can accept Disney's destruction of the best non-pirate character in the movies or you can't. But canon is canon, so you'll have to square with that some day. And me, for example, I can write an AU that gives James Norrington the chance for genuine character development and makes more logical sense than the original, but I can't claim that my version is the real version or make any money off of it, savvy? So, can you sail under the command of a pirate, or can you not?

Thanks again to MorganBonny for encouragement and for loving Drunk!James as much as I do, and to Nytd for beta-ing.

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"Are you listening with your head in the sand

Drown the words you don't want to understand

'Til the song stops, is it safe to come out?" -Threshold, _Slipstream_

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_Thirteen years later…_

Former Commodore James Norrington had always been a creature of routine. Once, his life had been ordered and fulfilling, falling into patterns like the ebb and flow of the tides, patterns that could be navigated through reason and moral strength. He had excelled in that life, taken joy in conquering its challenges. Now, caught in a maelstrom of loss, despair, and self-loathing, he had found new routines to delineate his life.

It began when he'd wake up in the mid-afternoon, and tackle several questions in a set order.

_Where am I?_

This morning, the answer seemed to be the alley outside a pub he had recently been frequenting.

_Do I have any new injuries?_

He had good days and bad days. On a good day, he could drink and find oblivion. On his bad days, he found only more anger and bitterness, and tended to get into fights. From the way his ribs, jaw, and left eye throbbed, beacons of pain against the duller ache that encompassed his entire body, last night had been a bad night.

_Do I have my things?_

He pushed himself up into a sitting position and looked himself over. His clothes were so battered and filthy by now that he no longer had to worry much about them being stolen. He had learned to tie his boots tightly with the most complex and foreign sailors' knots he knew, to keep thieves from getting them off him while he was unconscious. He had barely any money, but that was nothing new. He worked a day or so when he needed to, usually hauling cargo on the docks, and then spent the next few days in a drunken haze. Money for food wasn't too great a problem; he hadn't much of an appetite anymore.

_Do I have something to drink?_

This was the most important question, and the answer today was no, he did not. He rose stiffly to his feet, found his hat a few feet away, and headed to the back door of the pub. The sun was unpleasantly bright in his aching, bloodshot eyes, and he let them droop mostly closed. This was probably why he ran into the woman. He realized what had happened a moment later, when they were both on the ground.

"Sorry," he muttered to the figure dusting herself off beside him. "It's bright."

She didn't respond, automatically moving so that there was more distance between them. It was something he was used to by now. People gave you a wide berth if you looked unfortunate enough. He noted with some surprise that the woman was wearing breeches rather than a skirt, and then shrugged. Not really his affair.

He got back up, wincing as his ribs gave a stab of pain. _Probably broken,_ he thought idly. _I ought to bind them up with something._ His aching head reminded him that he hadn't gotten the drink he so badly needed yet. _With whiskey. I can bind them up with a lot of whiskey. Or rum. Gin?_

Suddenly a hand touched his sleeve, and he turned around to see that the young woman had broken her automatic distance and was staring at his face with something like disbelief.

"Wait … Lieutenant Norrington?" He slowly nodded, trying to remember if he knew her, but though something about her was vaguely familiar, he couldn't quite place her. She was pretty, he supposed, with coppery gold hair and large blue eyes. The feeling that he should know her grew stronger, but no name came to mind.

"What on earth are you doing here?" The mystery girl questioned him.

"Finding whiskey," James replied sullenly and turned away, not wanting to face anyone from his old life at the moment, even if he wasn't quite sure what role they'd played in it. "Good day."

"What on heaven and earth has happened to you?" the girl demanded, striding along beside him as he tried to leave. He decided that whoever she was, he didn't like her.

"Hurricane."

"A hurricane of rum, from the look and smell of you," she muttered.

"A hurricane of hurricane… things," he retorted awkwardly. "Go away." A year ago, he wouldn't have dreamt of speaking to a young woman in the tone of voice he was using now, but once one had resigned oneself to being an unpleasant bastard, it became astonishingly easy.

"Are you drunk?"

"I'm working on it. Give me an hour or so."

"Don't just—where are you going?!" She stepped in front of him. Yes, he definitely did not like her.

"Getting whiskey."

"I'm bringing you back to the ship," she told him in a surprisingly firm tone, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him in the direction she'd been going before their collision. James just stood there, caught between irritation and amusement as she tugged on his arm and he remained where he was.

"Go away." He was tired, in pain, and more than a little annoyed at her attempts to relocate him. "I need a drink."

"There's drink on the ship. Come along, would you?" She gave another pull on his unyielding arm.

"There is?"

"Yes, yes, there's some rum and I think the captain's got some brandy somewhere in his cabin." She paused, looked into his glazed and bloodshot eyes, then sighed and snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Free rum! This way! Come!"

"You only had to say," James muttered, allowing himself to be led. Right now, it was worth being made to face old memories if only he could get enough drink into him that it dulled his senses. Besides, he couldn't possibly have known her that well if he still didn't recognize her. "Who the devil are you anyway?" He saw a flash of pain in her eyes at that and added a token, "Sorry?"

"No… no, I've grown quite a bit since we last met, and you've obviously had some troubles since then. It makes sense that you wouldn't recognize me." James gave her a long look.

"You can't have grown much; you're rather small, you know."

"Thanks so much," she muttered. "Here, it's just this way." She led him across the gangplank and onto a schooner. His mind automatically registered the details of the ship's design and once again he felt the stirring of a vague sense of familiarity.

"Captain, I just found your cousin and he's a wreck," she yelled down a hatch, ignoring the curious stares of the crew.

"My cousin was in a wreck?" came the response from below decks, and a moment later, someone he did recognize came out of the hatch and froze when he saw James.

"James? What the devil…?" Stephen's eyes moved over him, taking in the bruises, the clothing stained with dirt, sweat, and vomit, the angular thinness of the face.

"Oh, Hell," James replied inarticulately.

"I said," repeated Susanna, "that your cousin _is _a wreck. Would you like to come with us? Because I'm taking him to the sick bay." That was who she was, of course. Susanna. The stubborn little goldfish he'd entrusted to Stephen, though he was disturbed by how quickly she'd grown up. Surely it couldn't have been that long ago.

"You said there was free rum," he retorted, feeling betrayed. "Shouldn't you still be younger, goldfish?"

He saw Stephen look at Susanna and mouth '_Goldfish?' _with an enquiring look. Susanna shrugged, equally confused, and turned to James. "There's rum in the sick bay, and I'm twenty-three years old."

"That can't be right," he argued as Stephen took his other arm and they led him as if he were some sort of invalid. "You were ten."

"That was thirteen years ago, James," Stephen said in a quiet, slightly grim voice. "What I want to know is how long have you been like this and what happened?"

"May fourteenth, my ship was lost and most of my crew killed in a hurricane off Tripoli. When I returned, I resigned from my post," James told them expressionlessly.

"You've been like this for four months?" Stephen demanded.

"It's September?" He'd thought the nights had been getting a bit cold lately.

"Yes. Look, I've some supplies to go get. 'Zanna, would you mind looking after him for a while?"

_Susanna—Zanna._ James turned the uncommon shortening of the name over in his mind and decided it had an appealing sound.

"I'll do what I can. Come on," she told James, pulling him after her by the wrist as if he were a dawdling child.

"I don't want to be any trouble," he managed to say as she manhandled him into a little nook of a cabin mostly taken up by a cot with a chair and a small night table beside it. The doorway was low enough that he had to stoop over slightly to enter. He sat in the chair, making Zanna roll her eyes.

"Then don't be. On the cot, now, and I'll give you some rum, though not nearly as much as you appear to have drunk last night." She made shooing motions with her hands until he obeyed her instructions and sat on the cot. There were two seachests neatly secured to the wall and she found a glass and a bottle of rum in one of them and poured a generous measure into it before handing it to him. He looked at the golden liquor inside and passed the glass back to her.

'"It's half empty." Zanna gave him an even look.

"And not going to get any fuller," she told him, firmly putting it back in his hand and sitting down in the chair beside the bed. "That should hold you for now."

James shrugged, tossed back the rum, and closed his eyes to savor the burn.

"So where's the medic?" he asked idly, noting the differences the years had wrought in her. Her eyes were still a little too big for her face, and she was still on the thin side, but her hair's color had faded through the years from the bright goldfish orange he remembered to a more muted hue. But the biggest difference was something intangible—there was a self-possession, a capability and gentle confidence about her.

"We've no actual physician, just me," she admitted.

"You?"

"Well, I couldn't stay a cabin boy forever," Zanna said simply. "We had a doctor on board as a passenger for a while, and I got him to teach me a few things. I'm no expert, but I'll do in a pinch if someone's ill or hurt. The rest of the time I'm the cook and just general crew."

"You stayed on as a crew member." He realized that he was stating the obvious and explained, "I'd always imagined you'd have found a place on land after a year or so."

"Why? This is home. The crew's become my family."

"Don't you want your own family someday?" he asked, tilting his head slightly.

"Someday, I suppose," Zanna agreed. "I'd miss the sea, though."

"I've missed the sea," James said heavily. "I'd been thinking lately about just signing up on the next ship out, wherever it was going, just to feel a deck beneath my feet again. I can't sleep on land any more, not properly." He looked wistfully into his empty glass and then at her. She wasn't so bad, really. She had a warm smile and now she was pouring him some more rum. He was considering revising his opinion of her.

* * *

I still kept doing double-takes; it was impossible to reconcile this bitter, drunken shadow of a man with the polished, powerful Lieutenant Norrington I remembered. There were hints of his old self in his voice or expression at odd moments, but mostly the impression he gave was one of ruin and despair. I've always been a little oversensitive to other people's pain, and his was radiating off him so strongly that my own body ached a little in sympathy.

He spoke more freely the more he drank, and I was told random bits of his life in no specific order: his pursuit of the pirate Jack Sparrow and the disaster that had brought it to an abrupt end, the house he had in Port Royal, his part in a battle at Martinique a few years ago, a girl he'd been very briefly engaged to who had for some reason jilted him for a blacksmith, his elevation to the rank of Commodore.

When I looked at the bottle forty-five minutes later and noticed how much lower the level of rum in it was than before, I got up and put it away, despite his protests.

"Now before you pass out, I'm going to take a look at you," I told him and he glanced down at himself and then back up at me in incomprehension.

"Why? I look like shit."

"Remember what I said my job was?" I reminded him, biting back a smile. He took a long moment to remember, then nodded.

"Oh, right."

"So lie down, would you?" He let out an amused huff of air as he did so and I sat on the cot beside him, starting with his face. I was careful to keep my touch light as I examined the bruises. It was strange to think of him fistfighting; I remembered him as so disciplined, so calm.

"What else hurts?" I wanted to know, turning his face with one hand so he was looking at me. His eyes were green. I hadn't noticed that before.

"Ev'rything," he answered simply. "Ribs, mostly. I think I was kicked some."

I winced at that and made quick work of removing his shirt and jacket. The entire right side of his torso was covered with black and purple bruises that made me recoil for a second in dismay.

"My God, no wonder you were holding yourself funny. What kind of fights have you been getting into?"

"Don't really remember," he said quietly. I ran my hand down his chest and his left side, checking for other injuries, but the bruising there was more minor and the ribs seemed all right.

"If I wasn't beat up and drunk, inappropriate behavior might result from this type of thing," he remarked absently, and then winced as I gently felt around the broken ribs. "Or not. Ouch. That wasn't nice."

"It wasn't nice of you to break them in the first place," I said distractedly.

"But if I hadn't, there wouldn't be a woman getting me drunk and taking off my clothes," he pointed out, his voice slurring a little.

I skeptically raised an eyebrow in response. I remembered him as being handsome enough when he wasn't filthy and half-dead. Surely there would have been someone who could be persuaded to take on those duties. Truth be told, I was forced to admit to myself that he was handsome even now. He was too thin, as if he'd not been getting quite enough to eat, but there was a layer of muscle on his torso and arms that made me wonder what kind of work he'd been doing.

I didn't let myself make too much of his flirtatious talk; he was drunk and exhausted and no doubt this was the first human kindness he'd been shown in a while. I stood up to fetch the bandages and he looked a bit disappointed.

"Goodbye," he muttered. I giggled before I could stop myself.

"I'm just getting something to wrap your ribs with. I'm not going anywhere."

"I knew that," he lied, and I laughed again.

"Your nose crinkles when you laugh," he observed absently, looking at my face with a disconcerting concentration. "And you have freckles."

There wasn't really an answer to that comment—what was I to do, argue?—so I turned and got the bandages from the chest. It took some badgering to get him to sit up, but when he did, he endured the tight bandaging stoically, though his body visibly tensed with pain. I tied off the bandage and ran a hand over his hair comfortingly.

"There. All done."

"Every time I decide I do like you after all, you do something to me that hurts," he complained.

"You'll get over it. Everyone likes me," I said with more confidence than I felt.

"Mmm," was his distant, inarticulate reply. I realized that I was still stroking his hair and quickly removed my hand. His eyes opened and I saw that brief flash of wistful disappointment again.

_He's a little starved for touch,_ I thought, feeling slightly awkward at this sudden, personal insight. _He doesn't even realize it. _

So what was one to do, alone in a small room with a drunk, shirtless, handsome man who basked in the warmth of your slightest touch, a man who you'd once nearly idolized and to whom you owed the happiness of your present life?

Well, the way he smelled right then made the decision a good deal easier, I'll say that much.

I left him to take a nap in the cot and then went to the galley and started supper cooking.

* * *

James fell into a deep, heavy sleep when Zanna left the cabin, letting the rum and the gentle rhythm of the sea draw him down into dreamless peace. He hadn't slept like this in months. It felt more like years. The cot, hard and narrow as it was, felt like pure luxury after so many nights spent on the splintery planks of a barroom floor or or the cold, unforgiving ground.

He woke to thirst and the unmistakable motions of a ship at sea.

_So I did find a place on a ship after all,_ was his first thought, followed by, _I wonder how generous they are with the rum rations._ He opened his eyes and stared at things for a few moments before the previous day came back to him, aided by the dull ache in his right side.

"Ribs... Stephen… goldfish…" he muttered to himself, shook his head, and sat up. "Shit," he added miserably as the pain everywhere else in his body realized that he was awake and came back full-force. The room was dim, lit only by a few rays of sunlight that came in under the door. He closed his eyes and concentrated on making the previous day's memories clearer in his mind, and then smiled slightly in triumph and made his painful way over to the chest Zanna had put the rum away in. The sensation of wood panels on the soles of his feet made him blink in surprise. Someone had figured out how to get his boots untied. That was impressive in and of itself. He'd actually had to_ invent _a few of the knots he used to keep the thieves of Tortuga from getting them off him.

He found the rum in the chest, ineffectively hidden under some bandages, and then cursed again under his breath as straightening brought a new wave of pain. He sank down on the chair beside the bed and removed the bottle's cork with his teeth, tossing it carelessly onto the floor before he took the first sip, closing his eyes and feeling it slide down his throat with the familiar burn that made everything all right. Another few sips followed the first, and soon he felt his muscles relaxing and his body ceasing to feel like there were leaden weights in his bones. When he rose, he was able to just stand rather than dragging himself to his feet. He saw his shirt lying crumpled at the foot of the bed and pulled it on.

There were a couple men on deck, and they shot him curious looks when he ventured out of the sick bay. He felt a slight stirring of shame beneath the rum-induced apathy he was floating in. His state was probably reflecting badly on the crew's opinions of their captain's family. At least when he'd been an anonymous drunk on Tortuga, no one's opinion of him had mattered. He scraped through the murk of his brain to dredge up the proper words to ask his question.

"Where might I find the captain?" he asked the nearest sailor.

"Mess hall," was the casual reply. "So you're Zanna's new victim, are you?"

_Well, that was not terribly reassuring._ He shrugged noncommittally in reply and dug back into his memory again to recall the location of the mess hall before heading in the proper direction.

When he came in, he saw Stephen and four other men sitting at the table, arguing over a map. They looked up at his arrival.

"Come sit down, would you?" Stephen asked easily. "Everyone, this is my cousin, James Norrington. James, this is my first mate, Gregory Hart, and moving clockwise around the table from there, you have the bo'sun, Percy Grant, the second mate, Arthur Knight, the quartermaster, Ransom, the gunner and shipwright, Red Donnelly, and seaman Benjamin Long. The two out on deck are seaman Franz Walter and Ewan Thatcher, our helmsman."

There was a brief chorus of 'how do you do's' as James found a place on the bench opposite his cousin's and sat down.

"Good morning… I wasn't aware you were leaving so soon, I…" he trailed off, unsure whether he should apologize that they were now stuck with him for the duration of the voyage.

"We weren't, but I thought it might be prudent since you're apparently wanted for aiding and abetting the escape of a known criminal." James stared at Stephen.

"I'm wanted for _what?"_

"Aiding and abetting the escape of a known criminal," his cousin repeated as Zanna came out of the galley, somehow managing to balance several trays heaped with rashers of bacon, toast, scrambled eggs, and beans without dropping them on anybody. The map was quickly moved aside. She put them down on the table and went back into the galley, from which she returned a moment later with fried tomatoes and mushrooms, sausages, and a pot of tea. James looked at it all, astonished. It was the type of traditional English breakfast he might have had at home in Port Royal, but even the officers on a Royal Navy ship weren't served anything this elaborate at sea. Everyone was already helping themselves, though, with no attention to rank.

"I like to make a_ real_ breakfast the day after we set sail, while all the food's still fresh," Zanna explained. Then her eyes narrowed as she noticed the bottle of rum in his hand. "Give me that."

"I'm a criminal now, apparently; I'm allowed," he retorted, taking a long swig of it just to spite her. Then, to his surprise, Long took it out of his hand and gave it to Zanna.

"What the—"

"Do what she says; she controls the food," Long advised him quietly, and then resumed loading his plate with bacon. James gave the other man a dark look and then glanced over at Stephen.

"Aren't you supposed to be the captain? Make her give it back."

"It's eight in the morning and you're already drunk. You don't need any more rum for the time being."

"I'm not drunk," he insisted petulantly.

"I'd like to talk to you outside for a moment." The tone of voice made it apparent that this was a politely phrased order from the captain, not a request from his cousin. He stood and followed Stephen out onto the deck.

"This isn't like you and I'm worried," his cousin began straightforwardly. "Exactly how much _have_ you been drinking of late?"

James shrugged vaguely after a moment of thought. "Dunno. There's rum, until there isn't anymore," was the best he was able to offer.

"You're drinking far too much, James."

"You're fine with me being a wanted criminal, but you're upset because you think I'm _drinking_ too much?" He gave Stephen an incredulous look.

"I don't believe a word of those charges, so I can't really be upset with _you_ because of them. But as long as you're on my ship, the drinking stops, if for no other reason than at the rate you're going, we'll be _out_ of rum within a week."

James considered this.

"Zanna says you have brandy," he offered by way of a solution.

"It would be wasted on you; you're in no condition to appreciate the quality, which means you don't get any," Stephen said matter-of-factly.

"But I'm your cousin."

"I'm not sure who you are anymore." That quiet, wistful comment from Stephen hurt more than anything anyone had said to him in a long time. He looked away. Stephen put a hand on his shoulder and gently shook it until James would meet his eyes again.

"I won't watch you do this to yourself. You're better than this."

"_I killed thirty-six men_, Stephen. They trusted their lives to me and I failed them. Everything that followed was no more than I deserved."

"And if I try to convince you otherwise, I won't get anywhere, will I?"

"How do you convince men back from the dead? That's a trick I'd pay to see." The sarcasm in his tone was blistering and Stephen gave him a stern look.

"Captain," he reminded James, pointing to himself.

"Sorry." There had been a time when he'd never have spoken to his cousin like that, captain or not, and indeed when he'd have been shocked at the very idea of replying to the captain of a ship he was on so disrespectfully. But that had been back when he still thought he was worth something.

He couldn't understand why Stephen was making him look at what he'd become. What was the use? All it did was make him sick to his stomach. There was no changing things.

"Come eat breakfast and stop being an ass," Stephen told him, and James obediently followed his cousin back into the mess hall.


	3. Chapter 2: Out of Delirium

DISCLAIMER: Copyright violation? Oh, I prefer to see it as the promise of redemption.

Countless thanks to Nytd for beta-ing and MorganBonny for encouragement and inspiration.

* * *

"When you get to the daylight,

Will you recognize the world you walked across?" Threshold, _Slipstream_

_

* * *

_

Without rum, the devastation crept in first**;** that darkness which had hovered, waiting, around the edges of his drunken glow for the past four months. The faces of every man who had died for his foolishness haunted him through sleep and waking. Then there was the rage, rage at himself, at Sparrow, at traitorous Elizabeth and her lovesick blacksmith

It was like that for nearly three days, and that was bad enough. Then the sickness began. His head hurt so badly that he was nauseous, and he could barely keep down the watered-down grog that was all they would allow him to drink. By that time, he'd have fought any man aboard for so much as a sip of something stronger, but he felt so awful that it was all he could do to crawl into and out of his cot. Despite the comfort of the sea's rhythm, sleep was eluding him, but he was useless on deck in this condition.

He started shaking and shivering uncontrollably on the fifth afternoon, and his vision began to go funny, the colors dulling and brightening without rhyme or reason. Zanna sat with him in the sick bay for a good deal of that time, and it was pleasant to have her near and listen to her voice, even though sometimes her hair grew so bright that he thought it would burn his eyes from their sockets. For that reason, he took to keeping his eyes shut when she was in the room.

'_Goldfish_,' he called her most of the time, his semiconscious mind often fumbling at finding her real name in the dizzying labyrinth of his thoughts and memories. She held his hand and spoke to him to distract him from his nightmares, and she kept trying to get him to eat, though at the time he couldn't fathom why. She was good company. He usually found it difficult to talk with women of her age. Most of the topics he found interesting—politics, naval strategy, literature, ships, and weaponry—were ones young ladies tended to find dull.

His goldfish, however, had grown up a sailor, and he felt easier in her company, knowing that. He could use shipboard terminology and jargon without having to translate it into landsman's terms, and indeed, the way he was feeling, he had trouble enough finding one set of words, let alone two. She also seemed to share his sense of the ironic, though perhaps she was only humoring him because he was half dead.

More than once, as he laid there, he wished that he was truly dead, preferably killed months ago in the hurricane that had claimed the lives of so many of his crew. He made the mistake of speaking that thought aloud once, and got a long scolding from Zanna that made his head hurt. Mostly he stayed quiet and let her talk, after that, and she passed the time sharing a handful of the unique jokes and anecdotes that all ships seemed to spawn amongst their crew**,** and telling him of the other crew members and their histories.

The most senior member of the current crew, save for Stephen himself, was one of the seamen, Benjamin Long. He'd been about sixteen or so when Zanna had joined the crew, and though James at first found it an alarming thought how much of her adolescence she'd spent under little supervision and in unsuitably close quarters with this older boy, it quickly became apparent that the two of them had grown up best friends and partners in crime, but nothing more. Despite how long he'd served on the ship, Long held no specific position. According to Zanna, this was because he was a hopeless layabout, but she said so with such casual fondness that he couldn't tell whether this was an honest assessment of the boy's character or a joking endearment.

The first mate, Hart, was the other long-standing member, having joined the crew a little more than a year after Zanna's arrival. He was on the quiet side and calm in an emergency, with a knack for noticing details that kept the ship running more tightly than it would otherwise. He gathered from what Zanna said that Hart and Stephen were close friends as well as shipmates. He tried to recall if he'd ever had a lieutenant he could trust completely, and decided he probably hadn't. That was a bit depressing.

Red Donnely, the gunner, was ginger-haired, with an oversized moustache and a brash manner. Red was the one who occasionally came in to the sick bay to inform Zanna that she was late in starting a meal. James's inclination was to dislike him; Red's loud voice made his head ache**,** and the man took a familiar tone with Zanna that he disapproved of. Zanna herself, however, made fun of Red right back, completely unruffled by his lack of manners, and for reasons James could not fathom, they seemed to be friends.

One of the more interesting characters on the ship, in his estimation, was the second mate, Arthur Knight, an African slave born in a French settlement in Hispaniola**,** who had contrived to learn to read and write and escaped at the age of twenty-nine. His name in his early life had been a different one and one he never used now; he'd taken a pseudonym inspired by the writings of Mallory. James had never approved of the practice of slavery, and considered cases such as Knight's to be proof that the intellectual advantage of Englishmen over foreign races was simply a consequence of education and not evidence of some kind of natural hierarchy. It had in fact been Knight, along with Stephen, who had seen to a good deal of the haphazard education Zanna had received.

Another odd duck among the crew was the quartermaster, Ransom, who didn't seem to have a surname and was perhaps a little bit mad. Unlike the others, Zanna had been fairly vague about his origins, saying only that he'd been a crewmember for four years. He kept to himself, mostly, and seemed to keep scrupulously accurate records of everything in his head. From what James had seen, it wasn't uncommon for one of the other members of the crew to catch him in passing and get him to work a navigational equation or to remind them how much of something they had in the hold**. **

The sickness James felt got worse by the sixth afternoon, and whatever she'd told him about the rest of the crew members, along with everything else that passed between then and the evening of the seventh day, was shrouded in a thick fog of pain and delirium. He remembered trying to drink weak grog and vomiting it back up again each time. He remembered Zanna's hands, cool and gentle**, **on his fevered face and smoothing his hair. He remembered the wood grain of the cabin wall beside him. He thought he heard Stephen's voice at one point, but wasn't sure. Then he finally remembered how to sleep, and everything was swallowed in merciful oblivion.

* * *

When James finally managed to keep down a few sips of grog and fall asleep, I all but collapsed myself. I'd been agonizingly aware of my own inadequacy as a physic during the past few days. For a while, I'd even thought he might be going to die. I fell asleep in my chair beside his bed that night and woke up on the floor with the chair tipped over—and how I'd managed to do that without waking, I truly do not know. I sat up to find James watching me curiously, looking more lucid than he had for days.

"How are you feeling?" My mouth asked without my bidding it to—I'd been asking it of him so much in the past days, I suppose I'd sort of carved the words onto the insides of my head.

"I'm still alive, but I'd kill for a drink. Why were you sleeping on the floor?"

"I thought I was sleeping in the chair until I woke up. The floor part wasn't in the plans." I got to my feet stiffly and righted the chair. "It's good to see you doing better."

"You were there, while I was sick…" James trailed off, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "And I can look at you now without your hair burning me. You look almost normal now," he said, sounding relieved. I quickly turned away to hide my smile.

"How kind of you to say so."

"I'm not kind," he replied matter-of-factly. "I'm an ass. You shouldn't have wasted so much of your time nursing me. I'm not worth it."

"I don't want to hear any more of that." I found the pitcher in the corner and poured some grog into a mug for him. "I heard quite enough of it while you were sick." I crossed the room and gave the mug to him. "Drink slowly now, you hear?" He nodded obediently and took a small sip.

"I hope I didn't say anything else that bothered you," he said, looking up at me a little uneasily. "Or anything, well, inappropriate?"

"Not particularly. You were funny, though; did you know that at several points you were trying to captain the ship? Quite often you'd mumble an order and a moment later, I'd hear the captain yelling very nearly the same thing to the crew on deck. It was almost eerie at times." James looked relieved and a bit sheepish.

"I was doing _that?_ Lord, I thought I'd trained myself out of dead-reckoning from the motions of the ship. It's an old bad habit of mine." He shook his head.

"You can_ do_ that? That's--"

"Imprecise," James finished for me. "It's a dreadful habit to get into. It's the captain's responsibility to be sure of the _exact_ conditions around him, not to stand there and guess at it with his eyes shut."

"I didn't even know it was possible," I said, still blinking at him.

"I suppose it isn't, for people who learn navigation properly, when they're supposed to, rather than getting by for a few years on instinct and guesswork. A captain I served under as a midshipman let our training slide in order to concentrate on catching a group of smugglers off the coast of Tobago. We boys were fine with that, of course; it was far more exciting to chase outlaws than to learn to do sums. By the time I was placed with a Captain who actually cottoned onto the fact that I was dead-reckoning it all and just using the octant for show, I was seventeen and the habit was so ingrained, it had to be beaten out of me."

I flinched and touched his hand sympathetically, and he looked up at me, confused.

"What?"

"That's just awful. You had a talent and they tried to beat it out of you?"

"It wasn't a talent. It was a liability. Sailing that way can be dangerous. And for heavens sake, it wasn't brutality, it was Naval discipline."

"I've never heard of someone being able to do that," I persisted.

"I have," James said darkly. "Sparrow. He does it constantly. And," he added with mingled reluctance and hatred, "he's better at it than me."

"Well, naturally," I replied indignantly, "since no one's ever beaten it out of _him_." He actually smiled indulgently at my expression.

"Don't be absurd, Zanna. I wasn't a child."

"Don't be condescending," I retorted, not liking the look on his face, as if he wanted to pat me on the head or something. "_I'm _not a child, either."

"Did I say you were?" Now he just looked puzzled at the prickliness in my voice, and I realized with a bit of guilt that I'd been delivering this tirade to a man who hadn't eaten in almost a week and gotten even less sleep than I had. I lightly squeezed his hand and got to my feet.

"I'm going to get you something to eat and some water to wash with."

"I don't need—" he tried to say.

"Oh, yes, you do. You're scarcely more than skin and bones, and you smell terrible," I told him in a tone that said I was not to be argued with on these points.

"Are you always this bossy, or will I finally be rid of you when I'm well?" he demanded, then quickly closed his mouth and looked remorseful. "I didn't mean it like that, I'm sorry. It just came out." I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"Yes, you'll finally be rid of me when you're well. I'm sure that will come as a great relief. I'm going to go find you some food now." I did a fairly good job of keeping my voice even through that, and walked calmly out of the sick bay. When I got to the galley, I shut the door behind me and sank to the floor, trying not to do something ridiculous like cry. Normally, I'd have shrugged off such a comment or given back as good as I'd got, but normally I'd not have been awake and half sick with worry for several days straight. I'd never dealt with anything like the past few days before. Up until then, being the ship's medic had been a matter of cleaning cuts, making hot tea, and occasionally stitching or splinting a minor injury. I had enjoyed it and considered myself competent, but I knew now that I'd only been playing at being a medic. The real thing was awful, exhausting, and terrifying.

I liked James Norrington… admired him a good deal… oh, hell, if I had to admit it to myself, I fancied him. He was everything a man should be—tall, handsome, honorable, clever, commanding when he needed to be, but surprisingly gentle at odd, unexpected moments, such as when he'd discovered a ten-year-old girl posing as a cabin boy and found her a place to grow up where she'd be safe and loved.

It was even more admirable when one considered that his own life had been somewhat cold. Stephen had described James' parents once as distant—kind and decent people, to be sure, but not altogether comfortable around children. The life he'd described in Port Royal sounded successful and full of opportunity for advancement, but lonely. The woman he'd wanted to marry had cast him aside in a public manner that must have been deeply humiliating to him, and the Navy had used his skill and loyalty for years and then allowed him to bear the blame when things went awry. It wasn't any wonder that he was bitter. Still, it was dreadful to have just gone through nearly a week of hell nursing a man who apparently found me so shrewish that he could barely stand to be around me unless he was drunk or delirious.

And I was so, so tired.

All I really wanted to do was sleep, in my hammock and not in an overturned chair on the floor. But I couldn't, not yet. So I tied my hair back more tightly, grabbed the last two biscuits from yesterday's batch, and heated water for him to wash in before I left the galley, with no evidence of my momentary breakdown showing on my face.

* * *

James felt like an absolute heel, which was just as well, he reflected, because that was what he was. He could remember her soothing voice, her hand in his, her presence close by, throughout the past few days. She'd stayed with him, cared for him, to the point where she was so exhausted that she'd fallen asleep in a chair beside his bed and not even woken when the chair overturned and sent her crashing to the floor. And in repayment for that kindness, he'd promptly and succinctly told her that he wanted to be rid of her. James groaned. He hadn't meant it to come out like that. And what had she done to deserve such a remark? Asked him to wash up.

He didn't deserve her kindness. Perhaps chasing her away had been the best thing he could have done for her.

When she returned, he was mildly surprised to find that despite his ingratitude, she'd warmed the water in the basin for him, another small touch of kindness among the thousands he'd already been shown by her. Why? He managed to eat most of the first biscuit, but avoided looking at the basin until she pushed it, a sponge, and a cake of soap toward him.

"I'll turn my back to give you some privacy, but I'm not leaving until you've had a wash, you understand?"

His first reaction was relief—he'd assumed she'd been threatening to give him the bath herself, an idea he was not at all comfortable with for more than one reason. Then he remembered why he'd made that assumption in the first place.

"Gold—Zanna," he corrected himself. "I'm not entirely sure I have the energy to so much as sit up now."

"Oh, really? Because there's some whiskey in the chest in the corner," she replied casually. James pushed himself to a sitting position, ignoring the pain that wracked his body, and tried to get out of bed, and she held up a hand. "That wasn't really true, but it seems you do have the energy to sit up after all, don't you?" He glared at her, feeling betrayed.

"No more excuses. Here, how about this, I'll help you untangle that mess you've got your hair in if you get yourself cleaned up a bit." James reached back to touch his hair, having barely even been aware of its existence for the last few days, and cringed.

"That's going to hurt."

"Not so much as doing it yourself would," Zanna pointed out, and he nodded in reluctant agreement. She smiled and turned her chair around to give him privacy.

He couldn't imagine how such a simple task had become so exhausting. By the time he was reasonably clean, he barely had the strength to get into the fresh change of clothes she'd placed at the foot of his cot. He didn't even bother buttoning up the shirt, but just collapsed back onto the cot and told her he'd finished.

* * *

I turned around to a sight that unexpectedly brought a slight flush to my cheeks.

_No one who has spent the last few days delirious and vomiting has any right to look so good,_ I thought petulantly, for he was sprawled loose-limbed on the bed, shirt open, eyes nearly shut, hair falling across his face, for all the world as if he were waiting for some lucky woman to come to bed and—_Brush his hair,_ I told myself sternly. _Really, Zanna, lusting after a man who can scarcely move. You should be ashamed of yourself_.

I went to my cabin to fetch my hairbrush and comb, and then sat beside him on the cot when I returned. Since he flat-out refused to sit up again, the hair brushing ended up being done with his head in my lap. In hindsight, I suppose I could have argued more convincingly if I hadn't wanted to.

At first it was more of a battle than anything, as his hair was matted in weeks-old knots. I was as gentle as I could be, but he winced more than once in the process. His hair was a rich chestnut color and surprisingly soft, and the feeling of it against my hands tempted me to continue combing even after the knots were gone. Every once in a while, he'd make a low, nearly inaudible humming sound of pleasure when the tines of the comb lightly brushed over his scalp or when my hand rested on the back of his neck. I found myself doing so more often, watching the tension fade from his face as he relaxed.

"That feels good," he whispered drowsily. Then he abruptly opened his eyes, as if the sound his own words had jolted him into wakefulness. "I mean, thank you," he quickly corrected himself. "I appreciate the help."

"You're welcome," I replied automatically, and then paused. "I suppose I should let you get some rest."

"Yes," he agreed, an involuntary grunt of pain escaping him as he sat up a little in order to move away. I quickly slid off the bed to give him more room. "Zanna? I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I didn't mean it the way it sounded. You've been more than kind to me, and I'm grateful for it." I smiled a little, feeling as if one of the knots in my stomach had been untied with his words.

"It's my job," I replied simply.

"Still… thank you. On a Navy ship, no one would have stayed by my bed the whole time unless I was the captain—certainly not if I was only someone's drunk relation who wasn't even supposed to be there in the first place." I rolled my eyes.

"You say that as if you stowed away or something, James. As I recall, I had to lure you here with the promise of free rum, and then once I'd plied you with that rum until you nearly passed out, we left without waking you. By rights, you could even consider yourself kidnapped." He was looking at me oddly. "What?"

"You called me James. You'd never called me by my first name before," he said.

"Well, it's terribly hard to think of a sick person as Lieutenant Norrington," I explained apologetically.

"That's just as well, because I'm not even so much as a lieutenant anymore," he said, a shadow passing over his face.

"Only because you resigned your position," I reminded him.

"You wouldn't understand**,**" he said bleakly and rolled over to face the wall.

"Would you like me to leave you alone?" I asked as gently as I could, though his self-pity was beginning to grate on my nerves.

"Yes, that would probably be for the best." Needing no further prompting to go and get some sleep myself, I gently closed the hatch behind myself before heading to my own cabin for a long, long nap.


	4. Chapter 3: Of Compasses and Captains

DISCLAIMER: Let us examine that claim for a moment, shall we? Who was it that, at the very moment James had a notorious pirate safely behind bars, saw fit to free said pirate and force him to allow the fugitive pirate a day's head-start, eh? Who destroyed his ship in a hurricane and put out a warrant for his arrest? So whose fault is it *really* that he ended up becoming a drunk and a traitor? Is that really a responsible way to treat your characters? And couldn't such careless behavior be considered forfeiting the right to said character in the first place?

Thanks to MorganBonny, without whose input this chapter would have been longer, stranger, and uncomfortably OOC, and to Nytd, for beta-ing and making sure Jack sounded like Jack.

* * *

"I found the cure to growing older

... and I am sorry my conscience called in sick again

And I've got arrogance down to a science,

And I've got arrogance down to a science." - Fall Out Boy, _I Slept..._

* * *

Elizabeth was just about ready to scream. Apparently it wasn't possible for a person to walk even from one end of Tortuga's docks to the other without being constantly propositioned by prostitutes assuming she was a boy, men assuming that she was a prostitute, and even once by someone who wanted her to consider the opportunities prostitution might offer such a pretty young lad. A group of dirty children had swarmed her and managed to pick two of her pockets before she could fight them off, and a passing drunk had stumbled into her and come quite close to vomiting on her boots. All in all, she was beginning to understand why Commodore Norrington had always spoken of Tortuga with such extreme distaste. (Though he wasn't a Commodore any more, was he? He'd resigned from his position and gone back to England, as rumor had it.)

She found the _Black Pearl_ only after passing it once without noticing in the dim twilight. Its signature black sails stood out a good deal less in a harbor where the majority of sails were not white, but a dingy brownish-gray. To her relief, the man on watch duty recognized her and lowered the gangplank so she could come aboard. He also managed to procure, with much grumbling protest, some water that was only slightly less foul than the contents of the bilges to wash her face and hands with. She accepted it gratefully; she'd allowed her face to become unspeakably filthy during the voyage from Port Royal to better disguise the femininity of her features. Though there was no mirror aboard the ship, she felt much better with all that grease, sweat, and dust off of her face. Then she went to the captain's cabin and made herself comfortable in one of the chairs.

She waited several hours. There was a book on the table; she tried to read it, but found that it was in Spanish. She looked at the maps, but found nothing noticeably out of the ordinary about them. She tugged at a loose thread in her waistcoat until half the hem had come undone. She found a rat in the chamber pot, which stared at her as if daring her to do anything, and then sauntered off to resume whatever rat business had brought it there in the first place. She unbraided, and then re-braided her hair. She snooped around some more. She picked up the Spanish book again and tried to puzzle out what it said. Something about an ingenious knight who had a lot of books, though that was about all she could translate of it. She put the book back down. She tried to get the tar out from under her fingernails, and then gave up. When she finally heard the captain's voice approaching, she propped her feet up casually on the table, quickly smoothing her hair and clothing and pasting a disinterested look on her face. He opened the hatch and froze there in the hatchway, staring at her with a puzzled look on his face.

"Why, Jack… I wasn't expecting you to turn up until morning. " She gave him a languid, unimpressed head-to-toe glance.

"And what are _you_ doing here?" he asked her, matching her casual tone of voice.

"I'm looking for my fiancé." Jack raised an eyebrow, though she thought she saw something uneasy briefly flit across his face.

"Your dear William is not in here, I'm afraid. This is the captain's cabin, not the missing fiancé's cabin."

"Yes, I know he's not in your cabin, obviously_._ I was waiting until you showed up. We need to talk."

"Well, I've missed you too, Lizzie, but isn't—"

"You know where he is," she interrupted firmly. "You'll tell me and help me find a ship that will take me there, and then your part in this whole affair will be over."

"Well… not exactly," Jack hedged, holding up his forefingers. "I do indeed know where he may be found, but there are unfortunately complications preventing the immediate _retrieval_ ofsaid fiancé from said location, though you needn't fear him going anywhere in the meantime, mind you."

"And why would that be?" Elizabeth asked in a deceptively sweet tone. Jack cringed inwardly.

"Look, I can explain."

"You'd better," Elizabeth said, casually picking up one of his pistols that was lying on the table and twirling it around on her finger.

"Do you even know how to use that thing?" Jack asked suspiciously.

"You point it at whatever you want to shoot and you pull the trigger," she replied with a shrug, bringing on another internal cringe.

"Put it down now." Guns in the hands of amateurs made him nervous. True, she'd probably miss if she tried to hit him, but he didn't want bullet-holes in his cabin's walls. Elizabeth gave him a dark look and put it down—in front of her on the table, within easy reach.

"William," he said, pulling up another chair and looking across the table at her, "'has been taken by Davy Jones. Literally," he added as he saw the stricken look in her eyes. "The lad's not dead or drowned, 'e's been, well, enslaved might be a word for it."

"Enslaved," Elizabeth repeated blankly.

"Yes, enslaved. And in order to save me—save him, that is, a debt of a hundred souls must be paid to Jones, of which I've already obtained some."

"Souls. He accepts payment in souls. I don't suppose he'd take anything else instead?" Elizabeth asked, looking thoughtful. "How many is_ some_, anyhow?"

"Er… four, if you must know," Jack admitted unhappily. "And I really don't think Davy Jones accepts pounds sterling, love."

"Does all this have anything to do with the jar of dirt under your bed, or is that some bizarre pirate superstition?" she asked suddenly. He narrowed his eyes at her.

"What were you doing under me bed?"

"Nothing," Elizabeth replied airily. "Just looking around."

"And exactly why did you feel the need to poke around under me bed?"

"Oh, perhaps because I was sitting in here and waiting for you for hours with nothing to do but try to read some incomprehensible Spanish book!" she burst out, throwing her hands in the air and getting up to pace.

"Cervantes is incomprehensible?"

"Whoever he is, he's _very_ incomprehensible if you don't know Spanish," Elizabeth retorted, and he sighed and shook his head at her.

"You grew up in a mansion, but know nothing of classic literature? Didn't you ever have a what-do-you-call-it, a governance, educator, government…"

"Governess?" Elizabeth supplied, looking amused.

"That's the word," Jack confirmed. "Didn't you have one?"

"Yes. She taught me things like embroidery, French, and poems about good children who obeyed their elders and went to heaven when they died," Elizabeth said dryly.

"Ugh."

"That just about describes it, yes."

Jack merely shrugged in response and took off his coat, tossing it onto a nail that stuck just far enough out of the wall to serve as a coat hook. Then he kicked off his boots and lay down on the bed with a wolfish smile, so as to subtly remind the lass that she was alone in a bedroom with a pirate.

The frustrating little chit merely removed her own boots and turned her chair around so that she could rest her feet on the bed, rather than the table. _Spend one night on an island with a girl and leave her virtue intact, and suddenly she's strutting 'round your cabin like she owns the place… _

"If you're looking for your rum, it's in that crate full of tasteless jewelry and rubbish over there," Elizabeth volunteered, and he realized he'd been glancing around the room and then back at her as he tried to figure out how to get her to show at least some small sign of realizing that she was confronting a dangerous and seductive man in his lair. He followed her gaze to the crate in the corner and sat up indignantly.

"Those happen to be items of mercantile value far too precious and/or illegal to go in the hold. Tasteless jewelry and rubbish, indeed!" He went over to the crate and patted it comfortingly, in case its contents had been offended.

"Valuable?" She arched one eyebrow at him, giving him a skeptical look.

"I will show you, though if you broke a single item in there, I will take it out of your hide, woman or not," Jack threatened as he began to carefully take things out. Elizabeth's curiosity got the better of her, and she came over to kneel beside him and watch.

"All right, you see this?" he asked her, unwrapping a piece of canvas sacking to reveal something long, flat, metal, and adorned with bits of color and foreign-looking designs. "This is an Egyptian chest piece, made of electrum and inlaid with lapis and carnelian, stolen from the tomb of Seti the First—bought it off a professional grave robber on the Ivory Coast. This is a coyote skull inlaid with copper and turquoise containing the spirit of a mad shaman from one of the Native tribes of the New World." The skull was a beautiful atrocity of marbled brownish bone decorated with gaudy strips of beaten copper and seemingly randomly placed blue stones. Jack gave it a fond look, as if it were an old friend.

"No one knew his real name, so I just call him Ted. This tin contains teónanácatl, this one hashish, and this one a particularly strong variety of hemp bud, all used for vaguely questionable medicinal purposes in various parts of the world." He gestured to three dented syrup tins, but did not take them out. "The thing wrapped in paper at the bottom is a cake of opium, for which the same applies. The rum bottle there does not contain rum, but laudanum—you use it to drug people."

"Why do you have all that?" she wanted to know.

"Well, aside from the obvious purpose of drugging some bugger you need out of your way for a few hours, they're worth a good deal in the right places, and if a crew member's badly injured, they'll be right grateful for the laudanum. Dulls pain, helps you sleep, that manner of thing."

"Is this worn on a necklace?" Elizabeth asked, pulling an ornately carved jade ring from the crate that looked far too large for her fingers or Jack's.

"Ah... probably something like that," Jack said in an odd voice, taking it from her and putting it with the rest before quickly continuing. "This—" he lifted out a heavy, ornate crown trimmed with fur that had seen better days, "—was the crown used at the coronation of King Henry the Sixth. This is filled with uncut diamonds from a mine in Africa."

"They don't look like any diamonds I've seen!" Elizabeth accused, opening the small sack he handed her. "And this one's yellow."

"Even more valuable, the yellow ones. This is a prayer bowl from the Han dynasty," he explained. "Bronze worked by some of the finest craftsmen to ever lay a hand to the metal."

"Will would probably be interested," she said, her eyes growing wistful as she sighed. "I want to be married to him more than I've ever wanted anything in the world."

"And this is a —" He froze mid-sentence. "More than anything in the world, you said?"

"Yes," Elizabeth replied, then, "What?" when she saw the expression on his face.

"If," Jack said, obviously choosing his phrasing with care, "There was something that could be used to get your true love back—other than souls, that is—would that then mean that the thing you wanted most in the world was, in fact, the thing which would bring Will back into your loving arms all the quicker?" Elizabeth gave him a funny look.

"I suppose," she said slowly, and then was surprised when Jack quickly dumped the items back in the crate with more haste than caution and started rummaging around frantically in his clothing. "Jack?" He merely held up a hand before returning to his search and finally producing the compass, which he handed to her.

She took a step back.

"I'm not touching that! It was in your pants!"

"Was not," Jack argued.

"It was! You just took it out of your pants!"

"Lizzie… it was in a pocket, just take it, would you?" he pleaded. She reluctantly allowed him to put the compass in her hands.

"I've not been able to get it work meself lately, but _you_..."

"If it won't work for you, why should it work for me?" Elizabeth asked, confused. "Isn't it broken, anyway? It's not pointing north." She held the compass up questioningly.

Jack opened his mouth to speak, then froze as they both heard the sound of hastily muffled laughter. Both heads turned in the direction of the hatch. Jack gave a quiet sigh of aggravation, strode to the hatch, and flung it open, knocking Pintel, Ragetti, and a tall, bearded black man who Elizabeth didn't recognize backwards.

Jack rolled his eyes and turned to look over his shoulder at Elizabeth. "So what do you say?" he asked her pointedly. "Do you think you can use the compass to find something that may help us save Will?" The three eavesdroppers looked sheepish.

"Well, what ever did they _think_ we were—" Elizabeth began, then blushed and gasped. "Of all the dirty-minded… disgusting… perverted…" she muttered angrily and stormed out of the captain's cabin, dropping the compass on the table as she went._ "Bloody pirates!"_

"'Ey, Poppet, yeh left yer boots in there," Pintel called after her with a snigger, but she didn't turn around.


	5. Chapter 4: Of Pirates and Wenches

DISCLAIMER: Blah blah blah Disney blah blah blah not mine... you know how it goes....

Thanks are owed to MorganBonny for constant encouragement and to Nytd for managing to keep me somewhat coherent.

* * *

"Old enough now to change your name

When so many love you, is it the same?

It's the woman in you that makes you want to

Play this game…" – Neil Young, _Cowgirl in the Sand_

_

* * *

_

Before they got out of the canoe, Jack caught Elizabeth's arm with a hand, waving his finger in her face.

"Not so fast, now, love. I remember what happened last time we were alone on an island together. Before we set foot on that sand, there will be ground rules."

"Oh, really, Captain Sparrow," Elizabeth said in her haughty, superior voice, raising an eyebrow with a slightly flirtatious curve of her lips and tilt of her head. Jack wondered for the hundredth time whether she was doing it on purpose or if acting this way just came as naturally as breathing for her, but he refused to be distracted.

"Yes. Rule one: there will be no burning of rum on this island." Elizabeth rolled her eyes and nodded her assent.

"As if there is any—" She stopped mid-sentence when Jack pulled an amber bottle from the canoe and let out her breath in an exasperated huff. "Oh, honestly, Jack."

"Digging's thirsty work, love," he told her, "as you shall learn, because rule two is no making Jack do all the work. Fair's fair. It's your boy we're doing this for, after all."

"Man," Elizabeth corrected, shooting him a glare. "Will is a _man_, not a boy or a… a whelp, or whatever else you like to keep calling him."

"Eunuch?" Jack suggested, then flinched away when she turned on him, teeth bared.

"He is not!"

"Checked, did you? But then of course you did, you made a _man_ of 'im, apparently." Jack wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at her, watching gleefully to see if she'd let him make that assumption or correct him. He knew very well that the young couple hadn't been intimate yet—all you needed was a glance at either one of them to tell _that._ Sexual frustration was practically leaking out their ears. He had a theory, though, that this was due to the whelp's—to _Turner's _hesitancy, not Lizzie's, and he waited with interest to see if she would confirm his guess.

"I… we… it is none of your damn business what Will and I do or don't do or… it's personal, all right?" Elizabeth snapped, managing to glare at him without meeting his eyes. "Get out of the canoe and let's get this thing over with."

"I certainly hope you're not like this in bed," Jack said casually as he obediently climbed out of the canoe, rum in one hand, shovel in the other. "Though some men like a forceful woman, of course. Will likes you to order him around, does he?" His back turned to her, he smirked at the strangled little growl of irritation she let out.

"I am _not_ dignifying that with an answer," she said, thin-lipped, stalking determinedly ahead of him across the beach, compass in hand

"The other way around, then?" Jack asked as he followed her a few paces behind.

"This stupid thing won't…" Elizabeth stopped and shook the compass a few times. "Ah… there." She strode off again. Jack once again, trailed after her, waiting patiently.

"What do you mean, the other way around?" she asked reluctantly a few seconds later, and Jack made a mark on the mental scoreboard he was keeping and smiled.

"Oh, you know, love… sometimes it's the woman who wants to be ordered around, handled a bit roughly, made to do indecent things…"

"Will does not order me or handle me roughly or make me do indecent things!" Elizabeth retorted in a tight, angry voice. _But I sort of wish he would, _her expression added, and Jack had to cover his mouth to hide the wide grin stretching across it. "Are you laughing at me, Jack Sparrow?"

"I'm laughing because the poor whelp doesn't half know what he's in for when he does take you to bed," he said, wanting very badly to laugh.

"I never said--!"

"Oh, he already has, then?" Elizabeth spun around and stamped her foot in the sand, glaring at him.

"You are absolutely the most vile, filthy-minded, _nosy…_"

"Didn't think so," Jack replied, looking smug. She glared at him for a long moment, nostrils flaring with anger, and then suddenly her resolve collapsed and a tense, defensive, insecure young woman was standing on the beach in front of him.

"Is it that obvious, then?" she asked expressionlessly, not meeting his eyes.

"Oh, him as much as you, to be sure," Jack reassured her. "Two more pathetic virgins, I have yet to meet. He was so eager to rush back to you, he could barely see what was in front of him."

"Of course he was." She took a few deep breaths and her shields came back up—she was Queen of the Island again. Jack hid an amused smirk. "It's somewhere around here," she said, holding out the compass for him to look. "In fact, I think we're nearly on top of it."

"Excellent! Take a step in the direction it's pointing, then stop and let it settle," Jack urged her, waving his arms at her encouragingly. "When you're right on top of it, it should just keep spinning." Despite her conviction that they were nearly on top of it, it took a good ten minutes or so of wandering, pausing, and wandering a little further before they had found the spot. Jack immediately put the rum down on the sand, stripped off his shirt and vest, and began to dig enthusiastically, finally slowing after he'd cleared a foot or so of the hard-packed, caked sand that covered the area the compass had directed them to and leaning on the handle of the shovel, panting, to take a mouthful of rum. The Caribbean midday heat was oppressive, the air thick and heavy around him. He turned to find Elizabeth sitting nearby, eyes fixed on his bare, lean-muscled torso covered in scars and tattoos and bronzed by the sun. He managed a grin and posed.

"Like what you see, love?" He shook with silent laughter as Elizabeth's mouth dropped open in surprised outrage and she stormed over.

"Give me that!" She wrested the shovel from him and started struggling to dig herself. "Honestly, it's only sand, not solid rock! I think you're going this slowly on purpose as an excuse to drink… damn it..." She trailed off into silence as she discovered that the sand was not quite as soft as it looked. To her credit, Jack thought, she didn't complain or give back the shovel, but continued fighting, using the shovel in the most ineffective way he had ever seen, but with so much determination that she actually was moving some of the dirt. Finally as she paused to rub her shoulder, teeth gritted, face slick with sweat, Jack relented and took the shovel from her hands.

"Watch me, love. You need to use your weight to drive it down _into_ the earth. The way you're doing it, you're just scraping the same dirt around. Use your weight, downwards, see?" Jack used a foot on the blade of the shovel to force it down into the sand. Elizabeth watched as directed, but because she was Elizabeth, she argued with him.

"I was using my weight. You have an advantage over me, because men weigh more than women." Her voice was breathless from digging, but buoyed by firm conviction. Jack paused, looked at himself and then at Elizabeth, and laughed.

"I doubt you weigh all that much less than I do, Lizzie. We're nearly the same height, both on the thin side, and you've got those, of course." he said, gesturing vaguely bosomwards. She was exasperated and overheated enough that she just snorted, dragging her sweat-soaked sleeve across her sweat-soaked forehead without much effect.

"Tell that to my maids; they're always trying to stuff rags into my bodices so that I'll fill them out better. If I don't have enough to fill out a dress, I can scarcely believe I have enough to outweigh a pirate's muscles."

"Oh, you fill a bodice quite respectably, you've nothing to fret about on that score." He took another break from digging for another swig of rum. Elizabeth took the shovel when he stopped and made another attempt, but when he took it back from her a few moments later, she didn't resist, but let him take it and sat down on the sand.

"Jack?" she asked after a moment of silence.

"That would be me, aye," the pirate said, grunting with the effort as he drove the tip of the shovel almost another foot deeper into the ground.

"Did you mean what you said earlier?" Her voice had lost its undertone of condescension once again, and she sounded quite serious.

"What, about your bosom?"

"No, not about my bosom!" she narrowed her eyes indignantly at him. "Are you still thinking about my bosom? Good grief, Jack! No, I mean about… about Will." Jack leaned on the shovel again as he tried to remember what he'd said about Will.

"Well, I really wouldn't know," he said after a moment's consideration. "I haven't exactly_ seen the goods_, so to speak, and since I've never been inclined in that direction, I can't say I—"

"_Not_ about him being a eunuch!" Elizabeth practically shrieked, hitting the sand with her fists. "About…" she swallowed nervously. "About him being so eager to rush back to me. Wanting me. Do you really think he wants me?" Jack looked at her as if she were raving.

"What kind of nonsense question is that? He's healthy a twenty-year-old chap, isn't he? Of course he wants you. Mind you," he added as an afterthought, "at that age I'd probably have humped a tree if you put a skirt on it." That had apparently been the wrong answer, he thought, watching her mouth crumple with the threat of tears. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why- he'd told her Will wanted her, hadn't he? This was possibly a woman type thing. He shut his mouth and went back to digging.

"He only wants me because I'm the alternative to a tree!" Elizabeth said in a low but passionately despairing voice, and Jack groaned.

"Bloody hell, Lizzie, he wants you for plenty of other reasons than that. I was only saying… just never mind, he wants you 'cause he loves you, savvy?" His back ached, but now she was sitting there with her lower lip trembling, looking about to cry, so he didn't dare tell her it was her turn to dig. She'd probably hit him on the head with the shovel. Instead he let out a breath and sat down beside her. "Look, you can't take everything old Jack says so seriously, love."

"Because sometimes…" Elizabeth said, continuing to embark on an entirely different conversation than the one he thought he was having with her, but looking so forlorn he hadn't the heart to ask what the bloody hell was _because sometimes_. "Sometimes I think he doesn't really want me the way I want him."

"Rum?" He offered the bottle.

"No thank you." Elizabeth Swann was pouting like a little girl, and he watched her, amused, knowing that she would never believe him if he told her so later. "He's had plenty of chances to be inappropriate," she said, staring at the horizon as she spoke, as if ranting to herself. "Oh, he'll _kiss_ me, he'll always kiss me, but he's never tried to take it any further! I thought when a man really wanted you very badly, he'd lose his head and just take what he wanted! That's what other women are always implying. But I've never had to make him stop! He stops on his own! When I don't want him to stop!"

Jack wondered if this island had a volcano god, or if praying for one hard enough might lure one over from a neighboring island. His instincts told him that this conversation was not going to end well for him no matter what he said.

"And you," Elizabeth continued, and he started in surprise to realize that she was actually addressing him and looking over at him. "You've had plenty of chances to kiss me yourself, but you never do! And you're a pirate! You take what you can and give nothing back! You… ravish maidens and what not," she improvised awkwardly.

"And what not," Jack agreed. "Mostly the what not. I'd take a good, earthy wench over a maiden any day. Actually ravishing, now that's a lot of work when for a bit of coin, you can lie back and _get_ ravished." He grinned rakishly at her, but her eyes were somewhere else again and her brow was furrowed.

"Is that it? Am I not enough of a wench?" She turned to face him, grabbing his arms urgently. "Jack, tell me how I can be a wench."

Jack narrowed his eyes at her, wondering if this were hysteria, sunstroke, or a mixture of the two.

"I don't think being a wench is quite your style, love," he said with all the tact he could muster, prying the fingers of her hands off each arm in turn. "Perhaps you'd better take that up with William and see if he requires wenching before you put yourself to the trouble."

"I don't know what he wants, that's why I'm asking you!" Elizabeth pleaded. "Tell me what's wrong with me! Why haven't _you_ kissed me, _really_ why? You've kissed hundreds of women—" _Hundreds? _Jack raised an eyebrow. "--but you haven't kissed me. You've had the opportunity so many times, and still you've never—" She had scooted closer to him and was now leaning towards him on her knees, her face inches from his.

"You're not mine to kiss, Elizabeth," Jack told her patiently, shutting his eyes and praying for the volcano god to hurry up.

"I thought you were a pirate."

"Being a pirate doesn't mean I'd steal a mate's girl," he responded, a bit offended. "Maybe I'd steal his money in a pinch, but not his girl. There's some things you just don't do, savvy?"

"_Steal_ me? You wouldn't know what to do with me if you had me," she taunted him. "Some pirate! The great Captain Jack Sparrow, afraid to kiss a—"

The end of the word was lost as Jack's temper, already strained by the heat, finally snapped and he caught the queue she'd tied her hair in at the nape of her neck and jerked her the last fraction of an inch forward, taking her lips roughly and angrily, a predator's kiss, the other hand grabbing her jaw and applying pressure until her mouth was forced open to accept his tongue. He felt her gasp and then moan, and his hand tightened on her hair, keeping her mouth fastened to his as she sagged with pleasure. She let him claim her mouth with teeth and tongue and fire, hands pressed flat against his chest, letting out a soft whimper of surrender that he felt rather than heard.

"Let her go." Every muscle in Jack's body tensed. _Bloody hell, _he knew that voice. How had Will escaped? But more importantly, how had that little hellcat of a Lizzie managed to finally goad him into kissing her the _moment_ her fiancé was due to reappear on the scene? This was bloody unbelievable. He released her hair as he felt the point of a sword nudge the back of his neck, and she shoved him away from her so hard that he nearly tumbled backwards into the partially dug hole.

"Will, you can put away the sword now, mate, I swear, she's all yours."

"Oh, God," he heard Elizabeth say softly, though whether she was overwhelmed by the kiss, frightened by Will pointing a sword at him, guilty for doing this in the first place, or just dismayed at being caught, he wouldn't venture to guess.

"Are you all right, Elizabeth?" Will's worried voice asked. Jack froze in confusion at both the question and the lack of anger in the other man's tone, and then his mind put together a few things all at once. His roughness, never mind that she had enjoyed the ferocity with which he kissed her and nearly matched it. Her hands flat on his chest, combined with the way she'd pushed herself away from him the moment he'd let her go. Her soft whimper of arousal, all too easily mistaken for one of fear. The whelp's undying trust in his darling Lizzie.

"I'm fine," she reassured him, and he stared. _The nerve of her!_

He opened his mouth to explain in cold, concise words exactly who had been the instigator of what, but stopped.

Elizabeth was in Will's arms now, hugging him tightly and pressing her cheek against his damp shirt as if trying to hear his heartbeat under the fabric, a frightened, despairing look on her face as her eyes and Jack's met.

'_Please,'_ she mouthed, and he saw her hand clench on a fistful of Will's sleeve. He closed his mouth again.

"I really am all right," she repeated, smiling unsteadily up at Will. "Jack was just… being Jack, I guess." _Lying bitch,_ Jack fumed inwardly.

"How did you find this island?" Will asked. "I thought Jack's compass wasn't working."

"It worked for me. I needed to find something that could save you." The pirate kept himself from making gagging noises at the syrupy sweetness in Elizabeth's voice, but only with great difficulty. "Jack thought if he could just get his hands on the chest, we c—"

"William, I swear that I did _not _put my hands on—"

"The _Dead Man's _Chest," Elizabeth interrupted, shooting him a vicious look. "My bosom is _closed_ as a topic of conversation!" She shook her head, clearly flustered, trying to remember what she'd been saying.

"A topic of conversation?" Will's eyebrows lowered and he gave Jack another look.

"I just took a joke a bit too far, mate," he said, holding his hands out in an exaggerated gesture of harmlessness. "No offense was intended." Will gave him a dark look, but sighed and lowered his sword.

"I'm going to drop it, Jack, but as God is my witness, if I see you taking liberties with Elizabeth again…"

"Understood," Jack said quickly, and scowled as Elizabeth reached up and stroked Will's hair comfortingly. Jack looked at the shovel like it was a snake—his back and arms ached from already having done almost all of the digging, but it looked like the two young lovers were going to be attached to each other like limpets for a while, and he had serious doubts Will would pitch in and spare him the work or look kindly on him telling Elizabeth that it was her turn. Not having anyone to stroke _his_ hair and look adoringly up at _him_, he soothed his jagged nerves with several gulps of rum and started digging, thinking that they really ought to have brought another person on shore with them, and for more than one reason. Perhaps if there'd been someone else along, that would have kept Elizabeth in line… no, who was he kidding? Any of his crew would have seen what was happening and disappeared in accordance with the unspoken agreement between any man and his mates that one must never interfere with the possibility that the other might get some. It wasn't like there was anyone here who gave a damn about_ propriety_, like, oh, Commodore Norrington. He snorted at the thought—the Commodore tossing off his wig, grabbing a bottle of rum, and coming along to dig up pirate treasure—the mental image was ridiculous.

He was trying to ignore the way Will and Elizabeth were nuzzling up to each other behind him when the shovel hit something that wasn't dirt.

"The chest!" Quickly he threw away the shovel and used his hands to brush the last layer of dirt off, revealing something dusty and black, which he yanked up out of the ground with some difficulty, tearing a few of his nails until they bled in the process.

"Will, the key," he demanded after he'd opened the chest to find a smaller chest inside it, for all the world like one of those funny Russian dolls. He picked it up and stumbled half a dozen steps to face Will. Elizabeth had sat down beside the larger chest and was reading the rubbish that had been lying at the bottom of it— love notes, he thought, but hadn't checked. "Will!" The younger man was standing there stubbornly, staring at him with a closed expression on his face.

"I spent several of the most hellish days of my life on that ship," he remarked casually, in a voice low enough that it didn't carry to where Elizabeth was sitting, "after you traded my soul to Jones. I got a chance to see what your _friendship_ did for my father while I was there; he sends his regards. Why should I give you the key? I bled for it. My father traded years of enslavement for my chance to find out where Jones hid it. I can't just give it to you."

"Yes, well…" Jack paused, taken slightly aback. "When we get the heart, it'll be to your gain also."

"Of course, you could just kill me and take the key," Will continued, "but you won't. You may be a traitor, but you like to let other people do your dirty work. You don't have it in you to shoot me, and we both know who would win in a swordfight. So, what will you trade? You see, someone once taught me about picking the opportune moment." Will drew his sword silently and pointed it at Jack. "Tell me, for a chance to control the _Flying Dutchman_, what would you trade?"

"I'll die before I see you at the helm of the _Pearl_, boy," Jack growled. Will let out a harsh laugh.

"What makes you think I want the _Pearl_? No, you have something else that I want." Jack considered this.

"Charm? Notoriety? An unparalleled sense of fashion? We already traded away the undead monkey, so you're out of luck there. You can't have my jar of dirt."

"I don't want your jar of dirt," Will said matter-of-factly. "I want your compass."

"Now hold on a minute, mate, you don't just give something like that away." Jack held up his hands, eyes growing serious. The whelp nodded.

"It's a trade I'm after, not a gift," he said. "You give me the compass, I give you the key, and we're square. All I ever wanted from this mad quest of yours was my and Elizabeth's freedom from the charges against our names. Lord Beckett wants the compass in exchange for the letters of ma—"

"Oh… those." Jack said with a chuckle. "I'm afraid Beckett is no longer in possession of said letters. Elizabeth had them with her when she found me."

"What?" Will blinked a few times. "How did Elizabeth get them?"

"Drew a pistol on him," Jack said dryly, "or so she claims." He considered for a moment the possibility of using the letters as leverage in his negotiation, but then he remembered that he'd left them in the bottom of the canoe. _Bugger._ Then a thought occurred to him and he brightened.

"So you see, mate, you don't need the compass to get the letters after all! You take the letters, go home, and all is well; no need for you to bother about the rest, really."

"An excellent plan. Let's go," Will said, sheathing his sword. "Elizabeth, we're going home," he said in a louder voice, turning as if to walk over to where she was sitting, reading the love letters.

"Wait, hold on, what about the key?" Jack jumped to his feet and waved his hands frantically at Will. "I still need the key!"

"Hmm… it's actually pretty decent silver. I think I'll keep it, maybe melt it down and make something pretty for Elizabeth," Will said casually.

"No! No, no, no!"

"Why not? I'm sure you'll be eager to see my father again and catch up on old times, you being such a _good friend_ and all." Jack just stared, aghast. _He knows what he'd be sentencing me to and he's ready to destroy my only chance to escape it out of spite? _

"Please," Jack said quietly, giving Will a level look.

"Beckett's not going to stop until he gets what he wants, Jack. Elizabeth and I will be safe if we have the letters, but what about her father? What about our friends? Do you really think that he's just going to shrug and say, 'Oh well, I guess I'll just give up on my nefarious plots and take up cricket instead'? How many innocent lives are you willing to watch him destroy just so you can get out of paying your end of a bargain?"

_But the thing is, _I _wouldn't _have_ to watch. I would be a long way away, drinking rum with pretty girls, so I'd never even know and thus could not be expected to do anything about it. _Jack was not fool enough to say this out loud, but it pretty much summed up how he felt about the whole issue.

"You don't know the price I paid for that—yes, it's a very nice day out, I agree. 'Ello, Lizzie." Elizabeth, who had just come up to them, let out an exasperated breath and shook her head.

"Men. That's why the world's such a mess, it's run by men. Did you really think I couldn't hear you two? Look, it's simple, and if either of you had bothered _reading_ those letters instead of strutting around challenging each other like idiots… "

"You've got a solution?" Will asked, giving her a curious look and ignoring her glare.

"Honestly, the two of you couldn't find your arses with both hands, could you?" she ranted, then sighed and addressed the pirate. "Jack, would you give up the compass in exchange for immortality and the power to control the seas?"

"Of course I would, but that's hardly an option, is it?" Jack asked with a laugh, intending his question to be rhetorical.

"Had either of you ever bothered to consider why Davy Jones locked his heart in a chest, put that chest inside another chest, and then buried it in an unmarked spot on an uncharted island in the first place?"

Both men exchanged a look and then Jack ventured,

"Because he loved Calypso so much that he couldn't bear the pain of not having 'er." He rather thought they'd already been over this.

"You are completely missing the point. Why not destroy it altogether, why not throw it into a volcano or off a cliff? Why go to such lengths to keep it protected from harm?" The men exchanged another look and Will shrugged.

"Because he didn't want anyone to find it and bring it back?"

"Find it and bring it _back?_ It's a gigantic, beating heart, not a coat that somebody left at a party!"

"Would you get to the point, love?" Jack asked impatiently.

"The point is that you can both have what you want! Will can have the compass to give to Beckett and you can live forever and have power over the seas. Davy Jones hid his heart instead of destroying it because if it's destroyed, he _dies_, and one of the ways that his role can be passed on to another person is if that person kills him. As long as it's safe, he can't be killed."

"Not to interrupt," Will said quietly, "but we are going to have a problem very soon." Something about the tone of his voice cut through the tension and both Jack and Elizabeth looked at him.

"The _Flying Dutchman_ is anchored off those shoals around that side of the island, so now that we do have a solution, I suggest we use it, because any minute now, the _Dutchman's_ crew is going to get here."

"You didn't think it was important to mention this before?" Elizabeth asked indignantly.

"Jack wouldn't have stayed long enough for me to convince him to give us the compass if he'd known," Will said simply, and to his surprise Elizabeth slowly smiled, then grinned.

"Pirate," she accused him fondly.

"Give me the key, then!" Jack shouted, jumping to his feet, eyes frantic.

"Compass," Will requested, holding out his hand. Jack reluctantly slapped the compass into the boy's hand and snatched the key, jamming it into the lock of the chest and twisting. The tumblers turned with a slow, audible clacking and Jack opened the chest to reveal the heart. He made a slight face as he picked it up and lifted it out. He stuffed it inside his vest, looked around, and found a big, smooth rock, put that in the chest, locked it once more, and gave the key back to Will. Then he kicked the chest over in the sand.

"Back to the _Pearl_!" he said, turning and heading for the canoe. "We're going to do this properly!"


	6. Chapter 5: Understanding

DISCLAIMER: All canon characters and suchlike are borrowed- borrowed, without permission, but with every intention of giving them back. (Norrington may come back suspiciously disheveled, but I will admit to nothing.)

Thanks to Nytd, for patiently enduring my constant inability to correctly spell "murmured," and to MorganBonny, for explaining to me the other day the basic mechanics of how ships move through the water.

* * *

"And all that you ever thought

Will fall to the ground like snow,  
Clearing the air you breathe,

Whitening all you know  
And all that you ever see

Is never the same again  
Your eyes will be opened wide,

Then you will understand." – Threshold, _Light and Space_

_

* * *

  
_

Jack gritted his teeth and plunged the dagger into the obscenely oversized heart, and as the blade tore through the resistance of rubbery muscle, the world shifted. No, that was imprecise; the way he _felt_ the world's existence shifted.

He had thought he knew the sea. No man could claim to _understand_ her, but he had thought her to be embedded in his soul deeper than his own name**;** so firmly a part of him that he couldn't _not_ know her. He'd imagined he could sometimes hear her calling to him, whispers in some ancient language that reverberated in his bones.

He had been a child. He had been a mortal. He had been deceiving himself. He had never known the sea. The shock of all that it truly was hit him like a blow to the head**,** and for the first time in his life, he knew what the sea's whispers had been trying to show him. It flooded into his head, savage and devastating.

_I am the all-encompassing, the primeval. I am the cradle of all that life has ever been, the grave of the last ghosts of what will ever be. I am the unrelenting. I chew history to dust with softly rippling teeth. I cannot be mapped. I cannot be held or conquered. I love you and yet I will devour you alive . I know you, Captain Jack Sparrow, but you will never know me._

_You are the bridge between this world and the next, now, the shepherd of all who die within my expanse. You are the ferryman, the keeper of the final gate. You are not a god, for gods cannot survive in my domain. There have never been gods of the sea, only servants, as you now are. I grant you understanding without thought, sustenance without hunger, shifting pathways with neither end nor beginning to roam as you will. And you will give me everything._

"Yes," his lips framed the word soundlessly, though the reply was not needed. He had already spoken it long before the dawn of man, and its echoes had merely waited until this moment to sound. A thousand mysteries unfolded in his mind, mind-twisting patterns of angles and forces, rhythm and time, shatteringly simple and profoundly complex. _Understanding without thought. _He saw pieces of the same whole that had never touched one another and never would, and how they constantly cast ripples through each other nonetheless. _Shifting pathways with neither beginning nor end. _He saw the skies beyond the sky, the colors that burned in the darkness, heard the sweet, unbearable sounds that could only be heard in the spaces between death and life.

He felt a ship moving towards him, not over the water, but passing through the dimensions like light through glass. The ship was meant for him. But there was part of him that was and would always be a man, and that man belonged to one ship and one ship alone.

_All ships are magic; any ship might cross worlds, had it only the proper captain. You can keep your barnacle-encrusted algae ship; I've got the finest lady ever to sail these waters right under my feet. _He smiled slightly, and felt the _Pearl's_ response in his mind, like a bird stretching long-furled wings, like the stirring of a sleeping woman under his lips. _Yes. There's a love. Live for me._

"Jack? Captain Sparrow! Jack? Jack! Cap'n?" He came back into awareness of his body and looked through his own eyes once more to see the crew all crowded around him, staring anxiously into his face. It would have been less than a fraction of a second's work to send the echoes resonating through himself and see, but old habit overruled supernatural ability and instead, he raised his hand to his face to check for tentacles.

No, same old face. So it showed on the outside in a less tangible way, then.

"That was… interesting," he murmured to himself, then gave the crew a reassuring smile and spoke in a louder voice. "No cause for alarm, mates. The whole immortality and powers of the sea whatsit has a bit of a kick to it; I needed a moment to get acclimated, as it were."

"Looked like it knocked the ten bells out of you for a moment," ejaculated Gibbs. "You certain you're all right, Cap'n?"

"Oddly enough, yes," Jack reflected, his brows creeping together with thought. "Now, men, I'm going to offer you all a choice, and regardless of which option you take, I'm not holding it against you. The _Black Pearl _is coming with me, but this is not a trip I expect all of you will relish the notion of making. All those who choose to stay with me are signing on for some old-fashioned adventuring of the sort a man hears tell of in stories, not the ones nurses sing to babes, mind you, but the kind told on the dogwatch on nights when the stars can't be seen. Heavy on the eldritch creatures of myth**,** and light on the happily ever after, savvy? There will, however, be considerable amounts of treasure involved; desirable bits of shine from every age have found their homes on the sea bottom, and I've a mind to rescue a good many of them from their loneliness." There were murmurs of both interest and unease among his men, and Jack nodded abruptly.

"I'll give you all the night to think it through. No more worries about the _Flying Dutchman_ and her crew; Jones is dead and the _Dutchman_waits on my command now."

Jack turned and was about to head for his cabin when Will stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"Jack, would you mind doing one last thing for us? Me and Elizabeth, I mean?"

____________

The wedding was held on the _Black Pearl_. Though it was a bit unconventional—the bride wore travel-stained men's clothing, one of the 'bridesmaids' lost his wooden eye as the vows were being said, the parrot unexpectedly chimed in with its own "I do,"and the borrowed rings resumed their places on Jack's fingers immediately after the ceremony—but what it lacked in style, it made up for in laughter, company, and genuinely well-wishing guests.

Jack had improvised the marriage vows with a creative flair that had everyone on deck howling with laughter. Elizabeth's vows did not include an injunction to obey, but rather "to always have his back in a fight, refrain from burning his rum, keep a firm hand to his tiller"— she'd not worked _that _one out until she'd already said it, to the delight and amusement of all of the crew—"and beat the tar out of any other wench who tries to crawl into his trousers." In return, and Will's were "to always have her back in a fight, keep her well-provisioned and steady in the water, defend her against any scum that tries to board her, and throw her down and ravish her regularly."

Their kiss was certainly a good deal more passionate than propriety would have allowed if they had been back among the cream of Port Royal society, despite the whistles and suggestive comments of the ragtag wedding party. The toasts were certainly cruder, as each and every pirate took it upon himself to offer the couple helpful suggestions for their wedding night, and by the end of the supper, Elizabeth was giggling helplessly, her face buried in Will's shoulder, and Will was blushing and trying to pretend he wasn't.

They waited for most of the wedding party to get good and drunk before they slipped away to their cabin, and Jack was one of the few who was still coherent enough when they left to be amused by the sight of Will trying to descend down the hatch with Elizabeth in his arms so he'd be carrying her over the threshold. Jack stayed out on deck for the night. Although he was all for the two of them consummating their marriage as much and as enthusiastically as they wished, his cabin shared a wall with the newlywed couple's and he didn't particularly want to _listen_ to it. He climbed up into the rigging with a bottle of rum instead, letting the caress of the warm wind and the rhythm of the ocean flow through him.

Captain Jack Sparrow was a pirate, but before he had been a pirate, indeed, before he had even been a grown man, he had been a musician. The music in his blood, his bones, his soul was the music of the wind and tide, of the moon and the water and the angles of the earth, a music that could not be contained or broken, a music that could only be felt. He'd learned how to angle the sails to catch an elusive wind as a violinist learned to tighten the strings of his instrument until the notes sang true. He'd learned to feel the sea's moods in the motions of the deck under his feet and how to make his ship a part of her song rather than fighting her unstoppable rhythm.

Yet he'd only heard a fraction of it, before. Through the velvet night, he listened and heard the song anew**;** deep, subtle harmonies and descants rising through the melody that made his soul burn with beauty. More than ever before, he was where he belonged.

As the first dim light of daybreak was kindled in the eastern sky, he heard a soft creaking sound from below and looked down to see Elizabeth climbing up to where he was seated. She was moving with the liquid, loose-muscled grace of a cat, he noted, raising an eyebrow at the picture, and a more satisfied expression would be hard to imagine.

_Well, full points to you for the wedding night, Turner,_ Jack thought wryly. _Never knew you had it in you._

"Good morning," he said aloud. "I'd have expected you'd be sleeping around this time."

"If I sleep, I might wake up and find that this has all been just a wonderful dream," Elizabeth replied with a smile that was a little tired and for once, completely without artifice. "I'd been lying there, watching Will sleep, but I was beginning to get a bit silly, so I came up here for a bit. The wind feels good. And I wanted to talk to you."

"By all means," Jack said, waving his hand in an almost regal gesture. "Rum?" He proffered the bottle.

"Oh, I'm already drunk on Will," Elizabeth laughed as she found a perch in the rigging nearby. Jack pondered that for a second and couldn't decide whether the comment was a poetic sentiment or just vaguely obscene. He said nothing, however, still curious about what the lass wanted to discuss. Elizabeth took a deep breath.

"I wanted to apologize," she said tentatively. "For acting like such a… well, you know. I'm sorry for provoking you all the time, leading you on, and especially for letting you take the blame for what happened on the beach yesterday. You _are_ a good man, Jack, and the best of friends, and I hope my marriage to Will hasn't… hurt you in any way." She looked up at him with worried dark eyes. Jack couldn't help but smile.

"As I once told you, Lizzie, it would never've worked out between us. You're pretty as sin and distracting as all hell, but my heart was claimed by another a long time ago."

"Really?" Elizabeth leaned forward, her eyes lighting with interest. "Who is she?" Jack laughed.

"She's right here, love," he told her, patting the _Pearl's_ mast fondly. "The lady of me heart."

"You're talking about the ship?" the young woman asked incredulously, then bit back an amused smile, her face radiant with afterglow in the dim predawn light. _Distracting as all hell._

"Wouldn't expect you to understand," was all he said. She sighed.

"Anyway, I just wanted to apologize and make sure you understood-"

"Oh, I understood. You'd been trapped in a cage all your life, and you finally got the chance to fly free at the same time as you discovered the power your sex gives you over men. You couldn't resist playing with that power for the short while before the cage bars closed back in on you. I recognized your game for what it was and played along, but you were_ never_ in danger of hurting me, love. I _am_, after all, Captain Jack Sparrow. I chose not to turn it into more than a game, for the lad's sake, but had I decided otherwise, you wouldn't have resisted me, and you know it.

"I could have had you when we were marooned on that island, Elizabeth Turner. I could have had you a dozen times over on our voyage from Tortuga. I could have had you on that beach if your beloved hadn't interrupted us. I'm not entirely sure I couldn't have you even now." He gave her his slow, wicked smile and watched her stare at him in shock and outrage. Then she rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated breath.

"Keep telling yourself that, Captain Sparrow," she told him, shaking her head. "Meanwhile, I am going to go get some sleep." She yawned. "It's funny, the dawn's making me feel tired in a way the darkness didn't." Jack watched her swing down from the rigging and head belowdecks, and smiled to himself.

_Oh yes… I could have had you, Mrs. Turner. But as much fun as that might have been, it'll be far more entertaining to watch you wreak havoc on the world, because I know what I'm giving you and Will for your wedding present ._

_---------------------------------------------_

The following morning, Jack took the Turners aside as soon as they emerged from their cabin. Jack untangled one of the ornaments, a small, foreign bronze coin, from his hair and turned it over and over in his fingers with a thoughtful expression on his face as they stood facing him, Will's arm draped loosely over Elizabeth's shoulders.

"What's wrong?"

"I have certain responsibilities," Jack began carefully, "that I will not be able to carry out in my capacity as a servant of the sea—responsibilities as a pirate. My first thought was to pass them on to a relation, but he has duties of his own to the Court, and he'd not much appreciate being pulled out of retirement, if I guess rightly."

"The Brethren Court?" Elizabeth asked, eyes lighting with interest. "So, it's true then, you really _are _a Pirate Lord?"

"I wouldn't lie about a thing like that," Jack said, his trickster's eyes going dead serious. "Wouldn't survive long if I did, either. Us Pirate Lords tend to be rather emphatic about setting aright exactly which captain has sovereignty in each domain, even if we don't always fully respect that sovereignty, savvy?"

"So**,** you need us to send word to another captain that the title's been passed on to him?" Will asked.

"That was my first thought, aye," the pirate lord said. "But truth be told, I don't like the idea of putting the lordship of the Caribbean into the hands of any of the scurvy wretches that linger in these parts nowadays. It was a proud post, once, graced by the likes of—" he bowed his head in reverence as he spoke—"Henry Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts, and Pierre le Grande. But the truth of it is, that age is over, and though it's not half the honor it used to be, I'm reluctant to hand over the title to some bit of scum that doesn't even abide by the code. So**,** I thought to myself, who do I know who _would_ honor the Code and the pirate traditions of old?" He looked up from the coin in his hands and straight at Elizabeth. "I must admit, the answer came as a bit of a shock even to me, but such a thing is hardly unheard of. In fact, the Pacific has been held by the iron fist of Mistress Ching for a good many years now."

"But… _I'm_ not a captain," Elizabeth blurted out, staring at the coin in his hand with both fear and longing. "I'm not even a pirate!"

"Not in practice, perhaps," Jack acknowledged, "but all the members of my crew who are ruthless enough to bear the title better than you could will be coming with me, I'd wager. Don't fret now; the role's been held in an honorary capacity before. A pirate lord doesn't actually have to be out pillaging settlements and gutting merchant ships to hold the post. However," he added, holding up a finger, "There's also the question of getting you lot home, because there will be other places I'll need to be very soon. That added to the fact that I coincidentally happen to have come into possession of a ship that I am not in fact using…" He pointed without looking to the _Flying Dutchman_, waiting in the nearby waters, then remembered as he saw the puzzled looks on the Turners' faces that it was still _under_water. "Oh, blast it," he said, and told the _Dutchman_ to rise.

"Mind you, she could do with a spring cleaning and a bit of repair work," he added as the seaweed-covered sails broke the surface, "but the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean not having a ship is bloody embarrassing and not a situation I would want to leave my successor in."

"Jack." Elizabeth stepped forward, looking very young and very awed. "You're serious, aren't you? You're really doing this?" He grinned playfully.

"Well, we can't have you becoming some dull, domestic little wifey, can we? Poor Will would be bored to tears in a week."

"I somehow think it would take longer than a week to domesticate Elizabeth," Will laughed.

"Oh, hush, you two, this is serious!" the wife in question interrupted, elbowing Will. "Isn't there, I don't know, some sort of ceremony?"

"Well, there's the one used when it was given to me," Jack said with a shrug. "'Ere, catch." He tossed the coin at Elizabeth, who fumbled catching it and nearly dropped it. She looked at him expectantly, the coin held tightly in her hand.

"Well?"

"That was it." He grinned insouciantly at Elizabeth's incredulous look. "Of course, some words were spoken to me when I was given it, but I'm afraid they wouldn't apply in your case."

"That's not quite fair," Will argued. "Are you making her the pirate lord, or not?"

"Yes, well, she's a woman," Jack said, looking a bit uncomfortable. "They wouldn't apply." Elizabeth narrowed her eyes.

"As the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, I _order_ you to conduct the complete ceremony as it was spoken to you."

Jack considered pointing out that generally when a pirate lord gave such an order, it was at gunpoint, but if he did say so, he suspected she'd actually pull a gun on him, even if she had to go borrow one from one of the crew.

"If you insist…" He cleared his throat and said in a mock formal tone, "Now don't lose the bloody thing or spend it on some cheap piece of skirt, Jack. And pass me some of that rum, will you?" Elizabeth blinked at him.

"_That's_ what the last pirate lord said to you when he gave you it?"

"Afraid so, love. Told you it didn't really apply." He reconsidered this as a thought hit him. "Unless, that is, you happen to have rum on or about your person, in which case, I expect it to be passed to me immediately." He wasn't sure what effect rum would have on his newly widened consciousness, but he was not averse to finding out.

"Does it look like I have rum on me?" she demanded. Jack's lips curled upwards slightly.

"You're a married woman now, Lizzie. It would be improper of me to conduct a search." Elizabeth rolled her eyes at that and let her husband pull her possessively into his arms.

"If any searches need to be conducted, they will be done by me," Will said quite firmly.

"Not out here, they won't. You can take that sort of thing belowdecks, savvy?" Jack told them, raising an eyebrow.

"If you insist," Will agreed. "Elizabeth, I'm to search you for rum belowdecks. Captain's orders." He began to pull her with him toward the hatch.

"Will! I was just given the _Flying Dutchman_ as a wedding present, of all things! Don't you want to at least go on board and see it?" Elizabeth cried, trying to tug her arm back, eyes still lit up with excitement.

"Algae, barnacles, sadistic fish people," Will summarized. "Seen it. Not interesting. Come on."

"Will!" She started laughing as her husband dragged her belowdecks. "Jack, don't you dare let my ship go anywh-!" Will clapped his hand over her mouth and pulled her through the hatch with him. A few of the crew members whistled and applauded.

Jack reflected idly that he deserved to get laid himself, sometime very soon, and made a mental note to see to it as soon as his new servant of the ocean duties permitted.

______________________________


	7. Ch6: Preposterous and Illegal Measures

AN: Sorry for the long wait! I promise the next few chapters will be posted more quickly. Thank you to all those still reading this!

Disclaimer: Borrowed! Borrowed without permission, but with every intention of giving it back.

Thanks to MorganBonny for keeping me from storing rum under people's beds and from doing terribly impractical things on the deck of the _Flying Dutchman.

* * *

_

"Penny for the dreams you thought you'd lost  
Penny for the dreams you thought you'd see  
Penny for the price you thought it cost  
Penny for the one you thought you'd be  
Pity for the times you kept it all  
Pity for the wealth you thought you'd get  
Pity for the day your empire falls  
Pity for the day your life got caught…" Threshold, _Slipstream_

_

* * *

  
_

Stephen found his cousin up on the mainmast top that night with a distant look on his face.

"James, are you all right?"

"Oh… fine," James replied, glancing over at Stephen, then looking back out at the sea with that same expression. "Does it sound any different to you?"

"Does what?"

"The sea—does it sound at all different to you?" Stephen listened for a moment, then shook his head.

"I'm not hearing anything, sorry."

"I'm not even sure it's a sound. But something _feels_ different." James was tapping his fingers on the railing. "Perhaps it's my imagination. Everything feels wrong, out of place, without strong drink to soften the edges.

"There are so many jarring differences… the _Porpoise_, the way she rides in the water, her tendency to—she's just not the _Dauntless_. I keep expecting her to be, then remembering that she's at the bottom of the sea now. I so clearly remember when I was first given charge of her. We had a good run together. She didn't deserve such a fate as I led her to. She ought to still be riding the waves, running before the wind, chasing pirates…" He trailed off and shook his head. "I'm talking nonsense."

"It might sound like nonsense to a landsman," Stephen acknowledged with a slight smile, "But I understand. Chasing pirates? Is that what you've been doing all these years?"

James nodded. "Whenever possible. Sometimes it seemed there was no end to them." His voice and expression darkened slightly at the memory.

"Well, naturally. The Caribbean is one great tangle of trade routes. You might as well try chasing the birds from a forest. In any case, was it ever your mission in life to eradicate them?" Stephen asked with a facetious smile.

"Yes, among other things," James answered so grimly that Stephen paused, not completely sure that his cousin was joking. He shook his head and joined James in leaning on the railing.

"In any case, while _The Impertinent Porpoise _may not be as grand as _The Dauntless,_ you can consider her your home for as long as you need to."

"Home… that's what Zanna called it as well," James recalled. "I didn't realize when I brought her to you that I was finding her a permanent place, though having tasted her cooking, I suspect you got the better end of the deal. Not many cooks have the patience and invention it takes to make ships' provisions anything more than barely edible."

"She has all the patience in the world as long as she's busy with something. It's being idle she can't tolerate. We've got to watch her, or she starts doing other people's jobs as well as her own. I don't know where she gets the energy."

James smiled slightly. He remembered being like that when he had been her age. Years, battle injuries, and the more demanding duties of captaining a ship had finally slowed him down, and then, after the hurricane… well, it had all seemed pointless, after that. He quickly forced his mind away from that and asked the first question that he could think of.

"How did you end up in Tortuga, anyway? It's not somewhere law-abiding merchants usually put in."

Stephen gave a humorless laugh. "Well, since you're no longer an officer of the Royal Navy, I suppose I might as well tell you; right now we are technically smugglers, thanks to the East India Trading Company. Those pretentious fucks stole out from under us a trade route we'd been working for more than seven years and chased us out with sabotage, privateering, and paperwork. They managed to fix it so that according to the letter of the law, all the goods we'd traded since the moment their little statutes were enacted technically belonged to them, never mind that we weren't informed about those statutes until nearly seven months later. I'm not even going to tell you the debt they extorted from us in return; if I think about it for too long, I'll have to shoot something.

"However, one of the tea merchants they failed to buy out got word to us that he was closing his business and offered us his remaining stock at half-price. We took the deal, off the books, of course, but as it's a rather rare and expensive variety of tea upon which the EITC now has full monopoly, we can't risk selling too much of it in any of the ports they control. Selling things on the black market is a risk I usually don't like to take, but we all agreed it was worth the risk for that one last bit of profit, especially since we'll be living from job to job for a while."

"Well, I'm at least glad to hear that you avoided trading on the black market," James said dryly.

"I believe what I said was that we tried to avoid _selling_ on the black market," Stephen corrected. "Everyone buys from it out there, government, merchants, and citizens alike. Between the Chinese bureaucracy and the British bureaucracy-- and don't even get me started on the Dutch-- it's the only earthly way to get some things. The situation in the Orient is getting bad, James. I was sorry to leave the businesses we'd worked with for years, but I wasn't sorry to leave the brewing political situation."

"I'd heard rumors," James admitted. "The Chinese government not cooperating and such." Stephen snorted.

"They're not cooperating any less than they ever were. They're just finding new ways to be uncooperative as England finds new ways to get around those new ways, and so on and so forth until everyone thoroughly hates each other but never quite enough to forego the profit of what trade _is_ possible. It doesn't help that we've been acting like complete bastards. They're bastards to us too, of course, which they'll readily admit, but they're _Chinese_ bastards, which, by their way of thinking, makes them far superior to us European bastards."

"You have the most expressive way of summarizing a situation," James told him, amused.

"I always was the clever one in the family."

"No, I was the clever one. You were the articulate one."

"And the charming one. And the popular one. And the good-looking one."

"And the insufferable one," James added, deadpan.

"Quite possibly," Stephen agreed, and both men laughed. "So… made a mess of talking to any more girls lately?" James closed his eyes and shook his head wordlessly.

"I proposed to one. She promptly fell off the battlements of the fort and into the water several stories below, from whence she was rescued by a pirate, who took that opportunity to forcibly remove her gown and corset before we apprehended him."

"Well," Stephen managed to get out when he was able to stop laughing, "at least he made you look good in comparison."

"That's the worst part. He didn't. She was quite angry at me when I tried to arrest him." His tone was ironic. Stephen paused at that.

"You did say he'd been taking off her clothes?"

"Cutting them off, in the case of the corset."

"This… didn't bother her?" James shook his head with a slight sigh.

"She'd grown up on pirate romances, I'm afraid, and seemed thoroughly convinced that the removal of her clothing after he'd dragged her onto the deck unconscious was for purely noble reasons. She was quite fierce in her defense of him. Then, of course, he grabbed her and held her hostage at gunpoint until we gave him back the belongings we'd confiscated from him." Stephen was laughing helplessly again.

"Sorry… she wasn't harmed, was she?" he asked.

"No. In fact, she survived several more encounters with pirates shortly afterwards- namely, being kidnapped and later marooned alone on an island with the one who'd dragged her out of the water in the first place—without sustaining any worse harm than a cut on her hand and some slight damage to her wardrobe."

Stephen looked cautious. "She wasn't…"

James shook his head. "No, thank God. Strangely enough, she didn't seem hurt or frightened one bit. In fact, I suspect she saw the whole affair as an adventure in which she was the brave and resourceful heroine.

"Nowadays, she's engaged to a blacksmith's apprentice who managed, through a set of entirely preposterous and illegal measures, to rescue her from her captors and get himself captured in the process, prompting_ her_ to accept my marriage proposal as part of a scheme to convince me to come to his rescue. Once everyone was safely back in Port Royal, the blacksmith professed his undying love for her and she dropped me like a hot rock," James said, with a slight acid tone to his voice. Stephen gave a low whistle.

"That was cold of her."

"In her defense, I don't think she entirely realized that," James said. "She'd been indulged and shielded from the consequences of her actions all her life. To her, this was just one more situation in which she had but to persuade her father to let her have what she wanted. I was merely a convenient step along the way. Our engagement was… a bargaining chip, if you will." He stared at the sea moodily and felt Stephen gently punch his shoulder.

"Bloody wench didn't know how lucky she was." James tried not to laugh at that, but eventually gave in.

"You know, I don't think I've ever heard Elizabeth Swann referred to as a _bloody wench _before."

"You still care for her, don't you?" Stephen asked, giving his cousin a sidelong glance. James nodded.

"But I don't hold out any hopes in that direction, if that's what you mean." He paused, then continued. "I still care for her, respect her. I could have loved her, had she given me the chance, but it was plain that her affections lay elsewhere. Even during our brief engagement, she made no pretenses otherwise."

"Yes, well, as I said," Stephen replied, shaking his head. "Bloody wench didn't know how lucky she was."

_____________________________________________________________________

"You're sure about this, Jack?" The captain, who had been listening to the distant, wild song of a typhoon as it hit the icy cliffs of the Antarctic continent, shook himself from his reverie and turned to his bo'sun.

"What good's immortality if some bugger can still come 'round and kill you?" Jack demanded. Bootstrap Bill Turner merely gave him a grave look, his face free of the greenish hue and barnacles it had once born, but still etched with deep, careworn lines. Jack had allowed a few of the former crew, including Turner, to remain.

"Ye're cuttin' yer own heart out, Jack. That's serious business, that is."

"Perhaps for a mortal it is," Jack acknowledged, waving a hand, "But I 'magine it loses a good deal of its seriousness when you don't _die_ immediately afterwards. Besides, it'll be safer where I plan to send it."

"An' that's another thing," Gibbs said, appearing behind Turner. "Sendin' it to the locker?"

"For some reason I'm disinclined to go with the 'bury it in a chest on a deserted island where no one could _ever_ possibly find it' approach," Jack pointed out dryly, stroking one of the braids of his goatee. "If I'm going to do this, I aim to do it right. The locker. The final shore beyond the end of the world. Even me old compass can't find anything that lies beyond the borders of this world. In the locker, well… I reckon if there's anyone clever enough to find out where it's hidden, navigate past world's end, and take it from the locker, they've just about earned themselves the job."

He turned and headed for the quarterdeck's stairs, the first mate, bo'sun, and a handful of other crew members trailing behind him. When he entered the sick bay, they crowded in there with him. He wondered if they were watching out of concern for him or just morbid curiosity.

"'Taint gonna be pretty, Jack," Gibbs warned the captain. "Cuttin' out yer own 'eart from yer chest." Jack merely shook his head.

"Thirteen years ago, I watched me ship torched with the crew still aboard her, the brand of pirate still burning like fire on me wrist on account of having done right by some poor wretches who'd had all but their own souls taken from them. Three years later, I watched the Pearl sail away under a crew of mutinous traitors, leaving me beaten half to death and left stranded on an uncharted island to die. Cutting out me own heart? I reckon that'll be a regular lark in comparison." It was rare to hear that tone in Jack's voice, the carefree contentment he usually affected worn thin enough that the darkness beneath came through.

"If you're sure," Turner said reluctantly.

"The blade." Jack held out his hand for it and Turner handed him a sharpened knife. The captain sat braced against the bulkhead of the cabin. Despite the nonchalance he had affected to reassure the crew, he was well aware that this surgery would be neither simple nor easy. There was a good deal of flesh, muscle, and bone to carve through before one even reached the heart, and then its removal—Gibbs was right. It was not going to be pretty.

"Right, now who's got the chest?" Jack demanded. Another pair of hands pushed it forward. He swallowed hard and opened his shirt

"Right then," he said, and brought the edge of the knife to his chest.


	8. Chapter 7: The Coming Storm

AN: Everything up to chapter 11 is already written and my beta has internet once more, so we should have clear sailing ahead for a while.

Disclaimer: If James Norrington were mine... let's not finish that sentence, there might be children reading this. Suffice it to say that he is not mine, nor are any of the other characters from the movies.

Thanks yet again to MorganBonny, without whose intervention I would have ruined a perfectly good sword blade and stored the gunpowder in the hold._

* * *

_

"There's a gathering storm eating up the night,  
There's a tension of souls, can you feel it bite?  
It's because we're not living on our own terms,  
Swept on a wave branded with society's burns.  
We're not happy with this unnatural law,  
We've moved into check into a corner of flames..."

-Threshold, _A Tension of Souls_

* * *

_Indonesia, 14 months later_

Lord Cutler Beckett watched dispassionately as the corpses of the latest harvest of pirates were thrown overboard. Exterminating them was proving to be a long and tedious process, but killing them all was by far the most efficient option. The financial losses incurred by permitting piracy to continue were simply too large.

It was almost a pity that he was driven to such measures, because those few pirates who'd had the presence of mind to adapt to the new order of things had proved invaluable to his cause in the past. He could use more men like Mercer. While Beckett had himself needed to learn over time to disregard the more impractical urgings of his conscience, Mercer had simply been born without one. It made so many things so much easier. The compass, for instance.

It would not work for Beckett. The needle spun frantically but never settled on a single direction. Apparently his scope of ambition was too broad. Fortunately, Mercer was a man of more basic desires. Beckett told him what he would be rewarded for finding and thither the compass pointed. The only times Mercer had not been able to make it work had been when Beckett had experimentally tried asking for the Holy Grail and for the legendary heart of Davy Jones, confirming Beckett's private suspicions that no such things existed. The other legends he'd put to the test had yielded rather disappointing results—he'd quit such attempts in disgust upon finding that Excalibur was merely a rusted, primitively crafted broadsword made from substandard iron.

By that time, he'd obtained a far more effective weapon.

The lost Byzantine secret of Greek fire, a liquid that ignited on contact with its target and could not be extinguished with water, had been laughably simple to obtain once its keepers were identified. It had been passed down through the generations of a Turkish family who were now on such hard times that they had been happy to trade the formula, which none of them could even read, for two goats. He'd used Mercer and the compass to find men who had the alchemical expertise to refine the formula, and the result was more than he could have dreamed.

Watching it devour ships was breathtaking, glorious. Even now, the drifting remains of the pirate fleet his men had destroyed flickered with it, beautiful and deadly under the darkening sky. He loved it the way weaker men loved opium or whiskey, the way priests loved Salvation, the way he had never loved a ship or a mistress.

There were far too few perfect things in this world, he reflected, but he was inclined to think that this all-consuming flame was one of them.

* * *

_Port Royal_

Will didn't look up from his work when Elizabeth slipped into the forge—he knew the sound of her footsteps now, and the way she closed the door, as well as he knew the color of her eyes. He merely nodded to his apprentice, Thomas, who grinned and ran off. He heard Elizabeth pull the spare apron off the wall, and then she was beside him, pulling on an old pair of riding gloves to protect her hands and taking over Thomas's work at the bellows.

She was an old hand at this, now, and Will had been surprised to discover how natural it felt to have her working beside him. At first, it had been one more small intimacy between the couple, teaching her the more basic tasks of the forge when she showed interest, but these days, it was no longer the lighthearted act of companionship that it had once been.

They could not speak privately in the house. There were always servants about, and servants could no longer be trusted. The forge, however, was still Will's sovereign domain, and the maids and butler had no interest in invading the sooty, smoky workshop.

"There's still no news of Father," Elizabeth said in a tightly controlled voice as Will waited for the metal to turn a uniform cherry red.

"It's only been a few months. We still might—" Will began, though there was little hope in his voice.

"We're not going to hear anything," Elizabeth cut him off in a flat, despairing tone. "He's dead or in a gaol somewhere. If I only knew which…" she trailed off. Will glanced over at her, the hollowness in her eyes making his heart ache.

"We can leave Port Royal, love, go somewhere else and start over. England…"

"Not while the sanctuary stands," Elizabeth insisted. "I'm needed here."

"When Jack gave you that coin, he had no notion that this was going to happen," Will told her firmly. "No one expects this of you."

"I expect it of me." Her voice was soft, but there was steel in it. "They're my people." She raised her hand to the little foreign coin she wore on a chain underneath her dress. "Besides, to everyone else, it's only a hospital. It's considered fitting for a married woman to do charity work. My time there doesn't attract undue attention."

To most citizens of Port Royal, the Sanctuary of God Hospital was a rundown charity hospital in one of the less fashionable parts of town. But since the East India Trading Company had begun its bloody eradication of piracy, it had become a sanctuary of a different kind, a shelter and meeting place for fugitive pirates and smugglers. Elizabeth was known among them now by the token she bore, and though Will could never deny her that right, he held the constant worry that any day her name and the title of Pirate Lord might be spoken together into the wrong ear. But it was only one worry among many. This was a time of fear.

The rights of citizens had been suspended, and any person so unlucky as to be accused of involvement with pirates could expect neither mercy nor due process. Beckett had held true to the promise implicit in the letters of marque; the Turners' past involvements with pirates were not brought up as charges against them. But it would only take the shadow of a suspicion to turn the attentions of the East India Trading Company back towards them, and such attention these days meant a noose around one's neck.

Will put aside the half-forged candlestick he'd been trying to shape and pulled Elizabeth away from the bellows and into his arms. She melted into him, so strong and yet so fragile. He stroked her hair and she leaned into his touch, heedless of the soot he was smearing into the dark golden strands. They held each other in silence after that. The only sounds were the occasional crackling of the cooling embers and the slow drumming of the rain that had begun to fall outside, both of them finding reassurance in the other's touch, as if the two of them together could form an anchor against the coming storm.

* * *

_The Atlantic Ocean, near the edge of the Sargasso Sea_

James stood on the foremast top, savoring the wind on his face, the shifting colors of the sea, the infinite horizon and the slight metallic tang in the air that heralded distant storm's approach.

He bore little resemblance to the smartly turned-out naval officer or to the pathetic drunk that he had been. Regular meals had put meat on his bones, and his work alongside the crew had strengthened his muscles and brought color back into his cheeks. With no wig to accommodate, he had let his hair grow longer, but his face was clean-shaven, and his clothes, though secondhand, were neat enough. His uniforms had been practically all he'd ever worn, both at sea and back in Port Royal, and he'd become accustomed to the stifling layers of crisply starched linen and wool. He had been surprised to rediscover just how much freer and more comfortable civilian clothing was.

He still wasn't used to being a regular crew member yet. Every now and then, an order to harden up or ready about still slipped out of his mouth before he could catch it. Eleven years as an officer and then six more as a captain had imbued his voice with a clear, rich undertone of command. It had the tendency to creep back in when he wasn't paying attention, to the annoyance of the crew, who often found themselves hurrying to obey an order before they realized that it was not the captain, but just James forgetting his station again.

But to his surprise, he was not entirely displeased to be merely another seaman for a change. He'd missed things like climbing into the tops to adjust a sail and feeling the smooth, sun-warmed wood of the wheel under his hands. They brought back memories of a time when he had been newly in love with the sea, burning with eagerness to create a better world and still innocent enough to believe that such a thing was possible

The _Impertinent Porpoise_ had settled into a triangular trade route, carrying sugar and molasses from the Caribbean to the distilleries in New England. There they picked up a cargo of rum and sailed for Africa, where it could be sold for a higher price than it would fetch in the Americas. From thence, they would return to the Caribbean, laden with gold, grain, and Eastern spices and start the triangle again. They were currently en route to Africa, and James was glad that the rum had been packed into the hold so that it was nearly unreachable behind the stores of water, canvas, and provisions. He still found himself longing for a drink at odd moments, though he was slowly coming to terms with the fact that life as he had once known it was over and he was going to have to start again.

His mind ran through automatic calculations as he gazed at the dark clouds moving slowly on the far horizon, and he bit his lips in order to hold in the command to bear South-Southwest to avoid the storm's path, shifting their course closer to the calmer currents of the Sargasso Sea. Stephen would most likely give the order the next time he came out on deck, and logically, James knew that a few hours staying on this tack would make next to no difference.

Nevertheless, it bothered him. With every breath he took, he smelled the rain, tasted the lightning, far away, perhaps, but too close for comfort.


	9. Chapter 8: Do We Have an Accord?

AN: I'm sorry this chapter took so bloody long. I struggled with it for various reasons, one of the main ones being my complete ineptitude at planning a sea voyage.

Thanks to MorganBonny for betaing and translating my confusion into proper nautical terminology. Thanks as well to Nytd for looking over Barbossa's dialogue and giving feedback. And thanks to all of you who are still reading despite the ridiculously slow pace these chapters are coming up.

DISCLAIMER: If they were mine, the historical facts would be more accurate and James would be in my cabin, naked.

* * *

"Follow the storm, I've got to get out of here...  
Follow the storm as you take to the sky...  
Follow the storm now it's all so crystal clear,  
Follow the storm as the storm begins to rise..."

- Blackmore's Night, _The Storm_

_5 months later, Port Royal  
_

Elizabeth entered Sanctuary as she always did: calm, demure, and unhurried, wearing her best imitation of the slight look of self-satisfaction that other women of her acquaintance wore when they bragged about the charity work they were involved in. Her demeanor changed abruptly once she had passed through the outer room.

Her neat, modest lace cap was pulled off and stuffed into the large basket she carried and her cloak thrown back to reveal a simple but elegantly cut dress gown in the unrelieved sable of deep mourning. She pulled a small, foreign brass coin on a gold chain from the neckline of her gown, letting it lie on her bodice, clearly visible against the dark velvet of the gown. From the basket, she pulled a belt that held a brace of pistols and a dagger and buckled it about her hips. The black of her gown and cloak and the metallic richness of her weapons, necklace, and hair made for an effective combination that scarcely a year past, she might have paused to admire. But she did not stop, striding purposefully into the hospital proper and nodding brusquely to the unsavory-looking characters she passed as she headed through the sanctuary's lantern-lit interior. Several of them bowed or tugged their forelocks; a few leered at her in what she had learned that they considered to be friendly appreciation. The leers, she ignored.

The regal air that had once been merely high-spirited bravado was gone, replaced with something colder and more brittle.

She spotted the profiles of the two men she was looking for and went straight to the table they were sitting at. Most of the cots had been gotten rid of or stacked in corners months ago; these days, the sanctuary bore a closer resemblance to the common room of a public house than a hospital. Elizabeth pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket and slapped it onto the table between Pintel and Ragetti, who started in surprise.

"I don't suppose you'd like to tell me the meaning of this cryptic little message?" she asked them, exasperated.

Pintel glanced at Ragetti questioningly, and Ragetti shrugged, equally puzzled. "Whut message?"

"I _know_ it was one of you." At the blank looks on their faces, Elizabeth sighed, unfolded the note, and read, "'An old friend requests a meeting with Mrs. Turner, if she be inclined to acquiesce to his request.' Who else would say that?"

"That would be me," interjected a rough voice, and she slowly turned, the blood draining from her face. From a dark corner a couple yards away stepped a man who she'd not expected to see ever again. She heard Pintel and Ragetti scrambling to their feet behind her with oaths of surprise.

"It can't be," she whispered numbly. "You're dead. I saw Jack kill you." Captain Barbossa smiled wickedly.

"Now, you mustn't believe everythin' yeh see, missy." His gaze moved over her shoulder to the two pirates behind her. "Master Ragetti, I believe you have somethin' that belongs to me. I'll have it back now, if ye please." Elizabeth blinked in confusion, turning to look behind her, and then her hand flew to cover her mouth in shocked disgust as Ragetti pulled the wooden eye from his socket with a truly disturbing little popping sound and stepped forward to drop it into Barbossa's outstretched palm.

"Much obliged," the old pirate said dryly, pocketing the eye.

"How… what… you…" Elizabeth abruptly took a step backwards, grabbed onto the edge of the table and lowered herself shakily into the chair where Pintel had been sitting. She was breathing hard, but her eyes remained fixed on Barbossa. "Y-you're _not_ an old friend."

"Are you goin' to have a fit of the vapors, then?" he asked her contemptuously. "Fer fuck's sake, lass, you will conduct yerself in a manner worthy of that token you wear or by the gods I will rip it from yer neck meself. A pirate lord faces another pirate lord on his feet." Elizabeth glared him and slowly, unsteadily rose to her feet.

"I _do_ hope you will forgive my momentary lapse," she said in smooth, honey-and-arsenic tones, the sharp edge of fear barely concealed underneath. "I've been a bit ill recently and the sight of a man I'd been glad to see shot dead was an unpleasant surprise I could have done without."

"She—" Pintel began to explain, but was silenced by a single look from Elizabeth.

"Was ill," she finished in a voice like ice.

"Oh, uh, right." Pintel sidestepped away from her a bit. Barbossa watched the expressions on their faces, raising a thoughtful eyebrow. Oh, she had it in her to command, she did, but something was wrong.

"Someone die?" he asked, jerking his chin in the direction of her mourning weeds with deliberate tactlessness, and watched her flinch almost undetectably.

"My father," she said expressionlessly, as if the syllables were sounds without meaning. Barbossa gave her a long, considering look. He'd wager good money that there was more than that behind her new fragility, but it hardly mattered. He was here to make a bargain. Seeing the change in her and knowing what was ahead of them all, what he was prepared to offer might be more valuable than he'd thought. He silently adjusted the terms as he watched her rein back the emotion in her eyes and smooth an invisible wrinkle from her skirts.

"Why are you here, Captain Barbossa?"

Barbossa dragged a chair away from the table, sat in it, and took his time propping up his boots on the table and settling in comfortably.

"I," he announced quietly once he had decided that she'd waited long enough, "Have a proposal to put to ye."

"I'm afraid that I am already married," she replied calmly, taking her own seat. Barbossa chuckled long and heartily at that.

"Aye, and I've been remiss in offering my congratulations. Apologies. But this proposal be of a more _businesslike_ nature. I'm assumin' ye know that the song has been sung." Elizabeth's eyes widened, but she nodded curtly. His lips curved upward slightly in approval. From the quick glances and intakes of breath from the other pirates within hearing distance, that bit of news had not yet reached Port Royal.

_Aye, always let them think ye're a step ahead of 'em. That's the way. _

"How much do ye know of the Brethren Court, missy?"

"That's Mrs. Turner," Elizabeth corrected him. He was amused to see the sharp flash of pride in her eyes when she spoke her new name. "The Brethren Court was first called together at the dawn of the great age of piracy, when the Pirate Lords met and conspired to bind the goddess Calypso and harness the power of the ocean for themselves," she continued, her voice taking on the tone of one reciting from memory. "At the second meeting of the Court, the Pirate Code was set down by Morgan and Bartholomew, including the ritual for calling future meetings. The song was written for that purpose by… a young pirate whose name I can't recall—" Elizabeth faltered in her telling,

"Teague," Barbossa supplied. "Go on. When and where was the Court to be held?"

"At Shipwreck Cove, on the longest night of the year."

"Now tell me, lass," the pirate lord prompted her, something dark glinting in his eyes, "Have ye ever been to Shipwreck Island?"

"No, but Captain Sparrow gave me the coordinates."

Barbossa snorted with laughter. _Ah, Jacky, so predictable… so careless. _"Aye? Pity you'll never make it to the Cove with coordinates alone."

"And why would I not, pray?"

"Shipwreck," Barbossa told her simply. "Natural hazard of the area, leadin' one to think that per'aps it were named such fer a reason. It takes an experienced captain who knows those waters to guide a ship through the Devil's Throat and the treacherous reefs beyond to a safe berth in Shipwreck Cove." He saw the understanding kindle in Elizabeth's expression.

"And you are offering your experience in exchange for…" she trailed off questioningly, making effective use of dark, sexy, cynical eyes through long lashes. He smiled in silent acknowledgement of her tactics and fired his answering shot.

"It takesan experienced captain to make it to Shipwreck Cove without a breached hull. You provide the ship, and I'll provide the experience."

Elizabeth arched a brow at him. "You really think that I would hand my ship over to you, a known mutineer, that easily?"

"It would be damned stupid of me to mutiny," Barbossa told her with a snort. "We'd be headin' fer the one place in creation at which ye could rightly and formally hold me accountable fer that manner of treachery against a fellow Pirate Lord. And surely ye don't believe that I'd be dishonorin' me own title by steerin' her anywhere _but _Shipwreck Island."

"My _point_, Captain Barbossa, is that you cannot be trusted."

"And this from a woman who stabbed me in cold blood with a table knife," Barbossa noted dryly. "High praise, indeed. I'll tell ye why ye want me as yer captain on the voyage to Shipwreck Island, lass. Here and now, ye're no captain and any respect ye receive is on account of that which hangs around yer neck. If ye don't care to deal with me, I can find another ship, but ye won't find another Pirate Lord who's got the cunning and inclination to turn ye into a proper captain who can command the respect of her men without that pretty bauble of yours." He dropped his feet from the table and stood, the chair scraping across the floor as he got to his feet.

"Make yer mind up quick, lass. I won't be lingerin' in this Navy-infested dung heap fer long. I'll wait a week on yer decision, and then I'm headin' fer Shipwreck Island with or without ye."

* * *

"Tell me you're not thinking of doing it!" Will demanded, giving Elizabeth an incredulous look. She looked away, thoughtful, toying with the coin around her neck.

"I'm not much of a captain, Will. I've a good deal of theoretical knowledge, strategy and the like… but I've spent the better part of my life attending tea parties! How will it look if the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean wrecks her own ship on the reefs?" Will looked at her, glanced back down at the ledger in which he was adding up the smithy's accounts, and then looked at her again, uneasy at the faraway look in her eyes.

"Find another captain to help you, then," he urged her. "Sanctuary is overflowing with pirates. The last thing we need is a man at our backs who's already tried to kill us."

"He wouldn't kill us _now,_" Elizabeth replied, pushing the ledger aside and perching on the desk so she would have his full attention. "I've thought about what he said… and what he didn't say. Think about it. He's a Pirate Lord, but he has no ship to his name and no men to crew it. For all he pretends he'd be doing me a favor, he's in a rather vulnerable place right now. If he joins forces with us, it will be nothing less than a matter of _his own survival_ to make me as formidable an ally as he can. And I can't help but think that if anyone can teach how to inspire fear in the hearts of enemies and allies alike, it's Barbossa." Elizabeth bowed her head and shut her eyes for a moment.

"I know it's a risk," she said quietly. "He's not like Jack. But he's offering me something that I'm not sure I can refuse." Her eyes met his, liquid with unshed tears. "I'm so tired of being weak and scared, Will."

"Elizabeth." Will gently cupped her cheek in his hand. "You're not weak."

She turned her head away from his touch, shaking.

"Yes," she whispered, getting to her feet. "I am."

____________

"So," Elizabeth said, looking Barbossa in the eye and swallowing hard, "Those are my terms. Do we have an accord?" They were standing in the small room that had once been the office of the head nurse of the asylum. Several months before, under the growing influx of pirates and outlaws, the old nun had prudently removed herself from her post, but aside from one of the walls being turned into a dartboard, the room remained mostly as it had been.

Barbossa smirked, shooting an amused glance at a quite obviously disapproving Will who was standing behind his wife. "Aye, that we do. Shall we discuss provisions?"

"Provisions?"

Barbossa rolled his eyes. "Yes, provisions. Fer the journey. Ever provisioned fer a sea voyage before?"

Elizabeth shook her head.

"Then sit," Barbossa commanded, and she joined him as he sat at the plain oaken desk. "You too," he told Will as an afterthought.

"What'll ye have to drink?" He looked at Elizabeth, who blinked in confusion.

"To _drink?_"

"Aye, to drink," he repeated in the voice of one who is trying to be patient.

"Are we or are we not discussing provisions?" she demanded.

"We are discussin' provisions. Over a drink. What will ye have?"

"Nothing, thank you," Elizabeth replied, sounding every inch the proper society lady.

"Now there ye've just insulted me," Barbossa admonished, lifting a finger. "When another captain offers ye a drink, ye accept. Common courtesy. To do otherwise suggests ye think the man offerin' would stoop to usin' a coward's trick like poison. Let's try that again. What will ye have to drink, Captain Turner?"

"I'm not supposed to answer 'tea', I presume," Elizabeth guessed, the corners of her mouth tightening. "Wine, then—or must I ask for a bottle of cheap rum?"

Barbossa raised his eyebrows. "A little thing like you? Best not to. You want to keep a clear head." He waved a hand in the direction of a few curious pirates who had been lurking around the doorway. "You! Fetch us some wine. You, see if anyone in this place has a decent map. The rest of you, bugger off." Elizabeth quickly covered her mouth to hide a smile. Barbossa reached across the table and slapped her hand down.

"None of that." He gave Will a level look until the younger man took his hand off his sword hilt, where it had flown the moment Barbossa had reached towards Elizabeth.

"None of what?" Elizabeth asked, glancing from Will to Barbossa and back.

"If ye want to hide somethin', keep it off yer face from the start or don't bother. No titterin' behind yer hands like a schoolgirl. And quit lookin' over at him fer help when ye're uncertain. Keep yer eye on the folk that ye _can't _trust and let him watch yer back." Amusement flickered in his eyes when her gaze landed firmly back on him. "Aye, that's the way. Now tell me, how's that ship of yers armed? How many gun decks and what manner of guns? Basilisks, demi-cannons, chase guns, what? How many men will she need for a full complement, and what's her ton burthen?"

As Elizabeth gave him the relevant information, he noted the figures down on a sheet of parchment with a pen commandeered from one of the desk's drawers and looked at it critically.

"Aye, she'll do." A pirate arrived with a bottle of wine and some plain wooden mugs. Barbossa poured it without ceremony, then returned to his calculations. He paused a moment later and narrowed his eyes at the look of the ink; someone, he suspected, had pissed in the inkwell.

"Is there a problem?" Elizabeth leaned forward to peer at what he was writing, but he silenced her with a quick wave of his hand before her words could chase the numbers out of his head, dipping the pen in the ink once more and listing the necessary provisions with amounts written next to them.

"That much'll last you ten weeks, allowin' fer wastage and the devil's portion. The—"

"That can't possibly be right," she broke in, her eyes scanning the numbers. "That's far too much meat."

"Care to find out the hard way how much food a ship full of men needs?" Barbossa asked quietly and ominously. "I'll tell ye how much; half again as much as ye're expectin' to get through. Fastest way to provoke a mutiny is a shortage of food and drink. The circumstances'll not always be fittin' to make anchorage at the port ye thought ye might, especially now the East India company's playing watchdog over all the large ports."

"How much ought I to pay the men?"

Barbossa put down his pen and gave the numbers a long, considering look, thinking about this. He'd not thought to include wages in his reckoning, accustomed as he was to not _needing_ to. _No prey, no pay._ A share of the prize money had always been lure enough. But men who would not have dared mutiny against him might be readier to rise up against a young woman who was still a pirate in name only. So a fairly low wage as a surety that they would not be returning from this voyage penniless, but taking into account …

"Bearin' in mind that each man'll have their cut of the prizes taken as well? Not much."

"The… the prizes taken? Aren't we going directly to Shipwreck Cove?" He paused in the middle of jotting down a few figures to consider for the wages and eyed her.

"Aye, directly, by way of several lucrative tradin' routes. Or do ye intend for the full cost of this venture to fall on ye rather than those who are responsible fer it?"

"No." Elizabeth swallowed hard and a more determined look came into her eyes. "No, I don't intend that one bit."

"Elizabeth," Will said in a low voice, so quiet that Barbossa scarcely caught the words. "If we need to pay for it ourselves, we'll find a way. We don't have to resort to—"

"My father's dead. My…" Elizabeth bit her lips and angrily wiped her eyes before the tears welling in them could fall. "… They_ owe _me." Barbossa gave her a slight nod of satisfaction.

_There's a start. _He glanced at Will, who was looking at Elizabeth with a mixture of fierceness and concern, then at the new Pirate Lord herself as she looked over the list of supplies once more, banked fires burning in her eyes. _Young Turner isn't the only one who can forge raw steel into a weapon._


	10. Chapter 9: Looking into Stormclouds

AN: Yeah, it took me forever to post this. Would have taken even longer if it hadn't been written months ago. Stress has shoved DR to a far corner of my mind, but I haven't forgotten, just . Hopefully things will get better and I'll be able to write again soon. In the meantime, I still have a few chapters after this that are written and just need to be bludgeoned into shape before I can post them.\

Those of you who wanted more James and Zanna, rejoice! There will be considerable amounts of them from here on.

Thanks to MorganBonny, for managing to beta this chapter even though she herself has spent these past weeks in hellish waters, with no storm anchor and on painfully short rum rations.

* * *

_Boston Harbor, Boston, Mass._

One week later…

"Now what I'd like to know," Hart said thoughtfully, "Is how far the Chinese will let the EITC go before cutting off trade altogether." He paused to sip his ale. Lanternlight flickered on the deck, and the ambient noises of the port city rose and fell in the background. "I think this entire wretched business may just provide them with the excuse they've been looking for."

"Perhaps not," Knight argued, his musical French accent growing slightly stronger as he leaned forward to make his point. "They may not be so eager to take back the task of suppressing piracy on their shores."

"One would have to weigh the damage the pirates were doing to legitimate trade against the value of the goods the pirates brought to the black market," Stephen put in.

"And the implied insult the Company is giving by policing waters under China's authority. That, I think, might tip the balance," Hart added.

James leaned back in one of the chairs they had brought up from the mess hall and half-listened to the discussion. Himself, the other three men, and Ransom, who was belowdecks, were the watch crew for the night while the rest had shore leave. Stephen had offered James the night off as well, but he had declined. Despite the fact that he'd been living among them for the better part of the year, he still felt like an intruder among the younger crew members when they grouped together during off-duty hours, as if he was someone's stodgy uncle dragging them down. Besides, the evening was pleasant, all crisp New England air and a star-scattered sky; it would have been a shame to spend it under a roof.

"The real question is how will the Company respond if they do?" Stephen was saying. "Word is that they're becoming rather casual with the use of Greek fire, and the tales I've heard of it are enough to make one rather sympathize with the pirates." James's attention was drawn back to the discussion by that last comment.

"Save your sympathy for those who deserve it. The Chinese may not deserve such measures, but the pirates have earned them a dozen times over," he told Stephen. "Your pity is wasted on them."

"I sympathize with _anyone _who's up against those bastards, pirate or not. After our experiences in the Orient, I'd rethink my opinion of the Devil himself if the East India Trading Company declared war against him. What is it with you and pirates anyway?" Stephen wanted to know. "I seem to recall spending a good deal of our childhood pretending to _be_ pirates."

"Only so we could 'commandeer' cake from the scullery and have play swordfights and spend all afternoon on the pond in that little jollyboat we rigged up with a mast and sail," James reminded him dryly.

"And now you hate pirates so violently you scowl every time someone says the word," Stephen persisted. James's mouth tightened. "How come, and since when?"

James glanced away for a moment. "When I was fourteen…"

_The second ship he had been assigned to as a midshipman had been the _HMS Peregrine_, a privateering vessel operating along the North African coast. He'd had little in common with the old, taciturn lieutenants or with the other midshipman, a nervous lad given to seasickness and writing poetry about birds, so he'd ended up mainly keeping company with the other seamen, whose respect he'd eventually gained with his steadiness and courage in battle. It had been a heady thing, pursuing enemy ships up and down the coast, fighting and winning battles, and for the first time in his life, being treated as a man rather than a boy. He'd fallen in with a group of rowdy, high-spirited young sea dogs who'd even sailed on a pirate ship for a couple years. He had eagerly eaten up their wildly exaggerated stories of the freedom and adventure of pirate life. He'd looked up to them._

_That had all ended the night he turned fifteen and they invited him to join them in an unsanctioned raid of the small farm near the port where they were docked, an evening of 'fun' and 'pirate-style revelry.' He'd been thrilled to go, but shocked and sickened when he saw what their idea of _revelry_ entailed. When they had spoken of a raid, he had imagined looting food and ale, letting the animals loose, generally scaring people._

_He had not imagined the farmhouse set on fire, the torture of the livestock, the rape of the farmer's wife and son, and the brutal killing and defilement of the bodies afterward, nor the remorseless delight the other men had found in it all. Any lingering childhood illusions about piracy had been immolated with the farmhouse that night. His screams at them were lost in the cacophony of destruction, his horrified attempts to stop them unnoticed, futile. Memories of that night had haunted his dreams for years afterward. _

This is what pirates are_, he had realized, crouched on the ground, retching, hot tears burning unshed in his eyes, the horrible sounds of their sport too clear to block out. _

_He wanted them dead for what they had done, and for the joy they had taken in doing it. He wanted them dead because their very existence was a violation of all he'd believed of the innate goodness of man. He wanted them all dead._

The silence after James finished relating that story was heavier than lead.

"What did you do, after?" Knight asked finally.

"I'd seen what they were capable of. I didn't dare say anything to the captain until we were back in London and I'd a chance of being transferred to another vessel. After we made berth, I spoke with him, told him everything that had happened. A court martial was held. Nearly all the men who had been involved hung for it." He'd watched the hanging silently, the memory of the burning farmhouse so sharp within him that a flickering ghost of it lay like a film over his vision. "I'd most likely have been discharged from the service for my complicity in it, but the captain spoke up on my behalf."

"Your complicity in it?" Stephen asked incredulously.

"I'd known there would be a raid and gone along with them," James explained in an almost expressionless voice, as if reading items off a list. His gaze was fixed on a point somewhere off in the darkness of the marina. "And I could have gone back to the ship and reported it immediately when I discovered the true nature of the raid."

"But then they would have killed you," Hart pointed out.

James nodded grimly. "The court martial took that likelihood as well as my youth and the captain's testimony of my character into account. They were much more lenient than I had imagined they could be." He glanced back at his shipmates and felt his shoulders tense even further at the expressions of sympathy on their faces. "I've quite obviously spoiled this conversation," he said abruptly, getting to his feet. "Wake me for my watch shift later." He turned, feeling guilty and strangely jaded, and headed towards the sick bay, where he still slept.

James had been in charge of the sick bay since an incident with a concussion and a swinging boom four months earlier, during which it had become evident that over his years of Naval service, James had managed to acquire a more thorough knowledge of shipboard medicine than Zanna could command. The young woman had surrendered her post to him with unconcealed relief, and out of expediency, James had continued to bunk in the sick bay when the cot was unoccupied. He lit the small lantern and tried to read a book he'd borrowed from Stephen, but the words on the page slipped out of his mind as quickly as he read them.

It had been a long time since he'd thought about that night in any detail. He'd been so painfully naïve that it nearly made him sick. They were pirates, after all. Shouldn't that have sparked in him some suspicion? It had been nearly twenty years ago, yet the recriminations played on in his mind.

He was pulled out of his reverie a few hours past midnight by sounds of laughter and song coming from out on deck—the rest of the crew, returning. A sudden knocking on the hatch caught him somewhat off-guard. He rose and opened it, and a rather drunken Zanna was pushed into his arms, laughing. He caught her unthinkingly and shot a questioning look at the equally-if not more- drunken young men who had brought her.

"Yes?"

"She cut 'erself somewhere," explained one young seaman, slurring his words slightly.

"I'm fine," Zanna protested in a slightly too loud voice. "It's a scratch, I just scratched it's all. See?" She held up her arm for inspection, the sleeve torn and stained with dried blood and dirt. "Doesn't even hurt!"

James nodded at the other men. "I'll take a look at it." He led her into the sick bay, over her persistent protests that she was perfectly fine, and sat her in the chair while he hunted up some clean water and bandages.

"It doesn't hurt?" he asked as he sat on the bed beside the chair and began to roll up the damaged sleeve.

"Doesn't hurt," Zanna confirmed happily. James nodded vaguely as he examined the wound on her arm. The long, deep, messy scrape wasn't nearly as bad as it had looked at first. It didn't require stitches, but it could certainly do with cleaning- there were a few splinters and a fair amount of dirt in it.

"How did you contrive to do this, anyway?" he asked Zanna, who was watching with obvious amusement as he examined her. She shrugged and carelessly waved the arm not in his grasp.

"Jus' happened," she explained breezily. He had to smile at her attitude of lazy, benevolent unconcern, so different from the precise and efficient young woman he'd come to know in the past months.

"You really are foxed, aren't you," he stated, dipping a rag in the water and beginning to gently clean the cut. Zanna giggled.

"Could be worse. I could be badgered," she told him, then cracked up laughing at her own joke. James bit back a smile.

"A dreadful fate," he agreed gravely.

"Or hounded, or cowed," she continued, watching with detatched interest as he carefully removed a long splinter from the wound. He nodded encouragingly.

"Or dogged," he added as he got the last of the bits of gravel out of the scrape, wondering where in creation she had fallen, then stood to get the iodine.

"Yes! Or… or slugged, or goosed!" She grinned at him, looking far cuter than she had any right to, and he smiled and tugged gently on the end of her braid as he passed by her.

"Or whaled," he contributed.

"Or turtled!" Zanna added triumphantly and he gave her a puzzled look.

"Can one be _turtled?_"

She looked at him perfectly seriously for a long moment, then burst into hysterical giggles so contagious that he couldn't help but laugh too.

"All right, enough of that," he finally said, catching hold of her arm and swabbing iodine onto the scrape. She bore the sting without flinching; perhaps without even noticing, for she was staring intently at him.

"What is it?" he asked finally.

"You have the prettiest eyes," she announced unexpectedly, making him blink and stiffen slightly in surprise.

"I... do?"

"Uh-huh," she assured him. "It's like looking into stormclouds… you know, when you can see the lightning flashing inside them and it gives you this shivery feeling in your chest cause you can almost feel the heat from it?" He felt his face warm a little and he turned away, gathering up the things he'd taken out to tend to her cut and going to put them back in their places.

"Well, ah, I think we've confirmed your state of drunkenness, goldfish. No more for you this evening," he said.

"Because I'm turtled?" Zanna wanted to know. He chuckled.

"Yes. Because you are turtled." He realized that he was self-consciously avoiding her gaze and silently reproved himself for being silly. Her comment had been perfectly innocent, and besides, she was so young—

It suddenly occurred to him that she was several years older than Elizabeth, and his thoughts jerked to a sudden halt as the realization hit him like a deadeye swinging from a broken halyard.

"James?" He looked down and saw that his hands had also frozen in mid-motion, the bandage half-wrapped around her arm, and quickly finished the job.

"Sorry, I was… woolgathering. There. All done." They stood and she gave him a quick, impulsive hug before she left. He returned the embrace a little awkwardly, his mind still swimming as his thoughts worked to adjust themselves to this new realization of her.

She had brushed against him during the momentary embrace. She was warm.

_Oh, no,_ he told himself firmly as the hatch clicked shut behind her. _I am not going to start thinking of her in that manner. She is not _warm _or _pretty _or_ pleasant-smelling. _She is a shipmate, that's all… even if she does smell good. Like cinnamon and ground pepper and fresh bread._

_And exactly what kind of deviant finds the smell of fresh bread arousing? _he asked himself sternly before sitting down and trying to return his thoughts to his book. He didn't have a much easier time concentrating on it than he had before. This time, however, the thoughts of pirates and old mistakes remained at bay for a while, chased away by her laughter and the echoes of her voice.

"_It's like looking into stormclouds…"_

* * *

_Off the Western coast of Hispaniola _

Barbossa watched as Elizabeth once again paused in her work and sagged tiredly against the gun she was supposed to be cleaning, face gone pallid and gray underneath the flush of sunburn.

Although he'd gotten the truth of her "illness" out of Pintel and Ragetti only minutes after she'd left Sanctuary, but he'd not realized the extent of her grief and her lingering bodily weakness. He'd had to give her more work than he'd expected to. He'd been cautious at first, worried that she might break under such harshness, but she hadn't yet, and if left to her own devices, she drifted through spells of tears and apathy. Working herself to exhaustion at least kept her from forgetting to eat and wandering the decks half the night with bleakness in her eyes.

But be it the hard work or the change of scenery, her health was improving, he thought, giving a slight, silently approving nod as she returned to her task, though she did not see him watching. Though he'd not have wished her loss on her, she'd grown from it, grown a little older, a little more thoughtful, less inclined to act on rash impulse. As she grew stronger and steadier, he could see more and more of that maturity rising to the surface, and it made him more confident of his plans for her coming to fruition.

She'd need that strength for what lay ahead.


End file.
